The artificial rearing of calves and their growth on grass diets: II. The effect of length of period of feeding cold milk substitute to spring–born calves at pasture

Abstract

An experiment was conducted with 32 spring-born Friesian heifer calves, purchased at an average age of 10 days and fed on cold reconstituted milk substitute at pasture.The milk feeding treatments were 4, 4£, 6J and 9J weeks in length, during which time calves consumed an average of 17, 23, 43 and 70 kg dry matter/head of milk substitute respectively. The differences between treatment mean live-weight gains for 10£ weeks of the experiment were highly significant (P < O'OOl): the gains were 0-49, 0-43, 0-64 and 0-78 kg/head/day. There was no significant difference between mean rates of live-weight gain after the tenth week so that the overall treatment-mean live-weight gains for the first 23 weeks, which were 0-65, 0-61, 0-72 and 0-74 kg/head/day, strongly reflected the length of the milk-feeding period and demonstrated no significant compensatory growth by the calves.Twenty of these animals were housed for the subsequent winter period and were returned to pasture for a second grazing season. These were artificially inseminated as their individual live weights reached approximately 320 kg. Animals weaned after only 4 weeks of milk feeding took an average of 7 weeks longer to reach live weights of 320 kg than these receiving milk for 9£ weeks. There were no marked indications of compensatory growth during this extended period of observations. _ _ _ . _ _ _ " cold milk could eliminate individual and hand feeding. The object of the present experiment was Early work on the rearing of calves at pasture in to assess the effect of varying the length of the ad Great Britain (Lampkin & Parkin, 1955; Roy, libitum milk feeding period, hence the amount of Shillam & Palmer, 1955) indicated that live-weight milk substitute consumed, on the pre-and postgains comparable with conventional indoor methods weaning live-weight gains of spring-born calves could be expected. Preston (1957) concluded that reared at pasture, inclement weather and insufficient availability of feed energy as a result of a low daily intake of cold, EXPERIMENTAL wet herbage were factors most likely to cause poor performance by calves reared at pasture; he Thirty-two Friesian heifer calves were purchased suggested that parasitic worm burdens were of only from various herds at an average age of 10 days secondary importance. Chambers & Alder (1960) during a period of 3 weeksinMarch 1966. The calves reared spring-born calves, which were provided with were kept indoors in individual pens for 3 days and shelter, on newly sown pasture free from helminth were then transferred in groups of four to small parasites: live-weight gains were comparable with paddocks on pasture. Each paddock contained a similar calves reared indoors. metal shelter 8 ft in diameter. Previous work on artificial outdoor rearing of During the period indoors, the calves were introcalves has involved the hand-feeding of warm milk, duced to the method of feeding milk substitute The first experiments in this series (Tayler & described by Tayler &Lonsdale (1969), except that Lonsdale, 1969) showed th...

Growth of cattle in relation to nutrition in early life

“…1959;Everitt 1972a;Reardon & Everitt 1972) illustrate that the early postnatal period in cattle is particularly sensitive to under-feeding, with long-term effects. Other studies with single-born calves confirm this view and show that the stunting effect is not due solely to a small pre-natal penalty suffered by twins (Burt & Bell 1962;Wardrop 1966;Everitt et al 1969;Lonsdale & Tayler 1969;M.L.C. 1971a;Gleeson 1971;Everitt 1972b;Byford 1973;Smith et al 1973;Dalton et al 1975;Kaiser & O'Neil 1975;Everitt et at.…”

“…Ioblin (1968) showed that the degree of compensation achieved in cattle was positively related to the level of feeding in the re-alimentation period. Compensatory growth during the recovery period in young calves is less likely on bulky feeds such as pasture (Lonsdale & Tayler 1969;Byford 1973) than on highly digestible, low bulk concentrate feeds (Aitken et al 1963;Swart & Swart 1965).…”

Dried Forages and Beef Production*

“…Fine-milled dried grass or lucerne age do not, however, display marked compensatory growth on grass diets (14). It is necessary, therefore, to know whenever possible (a) the empty-weight or carcass-weight gains and (b) the weight-for-age of cattle in relation to existing or proposed standards for growth rate.…”

Grazing Behaviour and Weight Changes in Calves Turned Out to Pasture

“…For the animals which grazed at the higher intensity this relationship was significant (P<0 05). Other workers have noted that restriction in rate of gain prior to 3 months of age is not associated with subsequent compensating growth (16,17,22).…”