There was a time when feeding milk replacers supplemented with antibiotics was considered a “blanket” insurance policy to protect calves from disease. But that practice has changed considerably. Industry data suggests that 20 years ago, roughly 20-40% of all calf milk replacer contained antibiotics. Today, it’s less than 5%.

What if you could give your calves a feed additive that improved their health, helped them gain more weight in the first weeks of life, and didn’t add any appreciable cost to your input budget?

Working at Strauss Feeds is less about being male or female, and more about being a qualified individual who can perform a job well, ultimately delivering the best products and services to the customer.

At Strauss Feeds, calf milk replacer has been a mainstay of our business for more than 50 years. But we are truly infant animal health specialists, and also manufacture lamb and kid milk replacers.

The recent publication of new national dairy calf nutrition standards has prompted us at Strauss Feeds to do some updating of our own.

Feeding pasteurized waste milk to preweaned calves can make sense economically, and many dairies and calf raisers do it very well. But managing a pasteurizing system is definitely not a “no-brainer.”

If there were a bovine equivalent to an “A-list” celebrity, it would be today’s dairy heifer calf.

In a matter of just a few years, beef-on-dairy crossbreeding has taken the U.S. cattle industry by storm. Many calf barns that used to be consistently loaded with black-and-white Holstein calves now have mostly black-hided residents.

Fall is a busy time of the year for dairies and calf operations, and it’s also a time we need to be extra-vigilant about a life-threatening health condition for calves: bloat.

Acidification of milk and milk replacer is a practice that has been around for a long time, with ebbs and flows of popularity. It involves adding an organic acid to lower the pH of the liquid ration to manage the growth of detrimental bacteria.

It may seem strange to start planning for colder weather in July, but depending on where you live, that’s probably what you should be doing. We understand a lot more than we used to about calves’ nutritional needs in cold weather.

In our quest to achieve high-quality dairy replacement and market animals, we want to raise them using the best ingredients to support their health and growth. Plus, we want to do that as affordably as possible.

In this quick video, MacDonald compares a sample of traditional, instantized milk replacer blend, versus the Autofeeder Blend.

Today’s dedicated calf-raising facilities regularly receive pre-weaned calves that may have traveled from a few miles to a few thousand miles. Having a plan in place for each load can help ensure that those calves settle in and take off to a healthy start in their new homes.

Dairy calf management systems have changed considerably compared to past decades. Today, many dairies do not raise their calves on-site due to larger facilities, specialized management focus, and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) considerations. Now, many baby calves of a week old or less are being transported across multiple states to be raised at dedicated calf nursery enterprises.

Building their careers and staking their futures in agriculture was never a question for Cindy Reynolds of Cobb, Wis. or Shayna Wilks of Wendell, Idaho. Others may have doubted them, but they never doubted the decision themselves.

The Don Strauss Animal Science Education Center at Huntington University, Huntington, Ind. has made it possible for the school to announce an innovative new major in Veterinary Nursing.

If there’s one, single “secret” to raising healthy calves, it’s the timely delivery of high-quality colostrum to every one of them. We’re still learning about all the “goodies” colostrum delivers. A lot of emphasis is placed on immunoglobulins, particularly IgG, because they can be measured on-farm.

Experienced calf raisers know that scours and pneumonia are the two most common and frustrating health challenges they battle in their animals. What we’re learning now is that the two diseases have some common denominators.

When they enter the world in the middle of winter, newborn calves need all the support we can give them. Calves are born with very little internal fat and few reserves to regulate their body temperature.