When it comes to raising healthy calves, sometimes it’s the details you can’t see that make all the difference.

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.”

Even skipping a couple of sanitation steps for a few days, or failing to properly wash one piece of equipment, can lead to an outbreak of sick, scouring calves that may take weeks to reverse.