Study compares forms of calf starter
By Dairy Herd staff
| Friday, May 11, 2007
Calves do better on texturized starter than pelleted starter — even when it was flavor-enhanced.
During a 56-day study (42 days pre-weaning and 14 days post-weaning), researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Southern Research and Outreach Center fed calves an 18-percent crude protein calf starter. Calves were offered one of the following options: 1) texturized starter, 2) a complete pellet or 3) the same complete pelleted starter supplemented with intake-enhancing ingredients of chocolate, whey or a commercial sweet flavoring.
The results show calves fed texturized starter grew 7.1 percent faster over the 56-day period than calves fed the complete pellet. They also had the best feed efficiency. Calves fed pelleted starter with the sweet flavoring performed the worst. Pre-weaning average daily gain of those calves was 11.3 percent lower than the other pelleted diets. This trend continued through the end of the 56-day study.
Here are some of the results:
| Texturized | Pellet | Pellet + Chocolate | Pellet + whey | Pellet + sweet flavoring | |
| Pre-weaning (1-42 days) | |||||
| Average daily gain, lbs | 1.32 | 1.24 | 1.25 | 1.22 | 1.10 |
| Gain/feed, lbs) | 0.63 | 0.57 | 0.57 | 0.57 | 0.55 |
| Post-weaning (43-56 days) | |||||
| Average daily gain, lbs | 2.13 | 1.95 | 2.06 | 1.85 | 1.36 |
| Gain/feed, lbs | 0.46 | 0.41 | 0.42 | 0.42 | 0.36 |
Source: Hugh Chester-Jones,
