Youngstock [DA.HM.Y]
MMN January 2025 – Outwintering Dairy Heifers
Outwintering dairy heifers can make significant savings on bedding and labour and with good planning and nutrition, growth performance should not be compromised. There are a number of things to…
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MMN November 2024 – Should You Feed Silage to Weaned Calves?
There is a lot of debate around whether weaned dairy calves can be fed on a grass silage-based ration. Standard industry guidance for years has been to feed weaned calves…
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MMN July 2024 – Why Won’t a Calf Suckle?
There are many reasons why some calves struggle to suckle from a teat. One of the main causes is an acidotic calf at birth and this condition is most likely…
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Ventilation in Calf Housing through Summer
As the weather warms steps need to be taken to prevent disease outbreaks in calves. Calf sheds should be well-ventilated to ensure cool fresh air is flowing through. Air capacity…
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MMN May 2024 – Colostrum Beyond Antibodies: What is New?
Project: Identifying critical control points for colostrum contamination and Mycoplasma bovis prevalence in first milking colostrum from Scottish dairy herds. When colostrum quality is discussed, it is tempting to think…
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Providing a Comfortable Thermal Environment for Calves
Despite the various methods for housing calves (e.g. individual, paired, group, pens, hutches) the basic principles for housing should be the same. The environment should be as clean as possible,…
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MMN March 2024 – How Long are your Heifers Lasting?
According to the recently published NMR 500 Herd KPI Report for 2023, the medium number of lactations per cow at exit was 3.6 and the culling rate was 28%, with…
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MMN July 2023 – Small Calf Syndrome (SCS)
SRUC Veterinary Services at St Boswells have recently been investigating the occurrence of unusually small calves from five spring calving suckler herds in the area. The affected herds have either…
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MMN July 2023 – Milk Feeding Management of Dairy Heifer Calves
Maximising growth rates of dairy heifer calves during the milk feeding phase is important to get calves off to a good start in life. While they tend to be fed…
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Milk Manager News November 2022 – Thoracic Ultrasound Scanning in Calves
Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a very common and costly disease in dairy calves and early detection and treatment is vital to minimise the impact on growth and lifetime performance.…
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