Raising heifers has always been an important job. After all, they represent the dairy’s future. But with rising feed costs, raising heifers has become an even more important role for a dairy producer. Two dairy farms of different sizes and scales share how they push forward with raising healthy calves to fill their future pipeline.
High Noon Dairy
Located in Hereford, Texas, High Noon Dairy consists of 4,700 cows that are a mixture of mostly crossbreds, Jerseys and some Holsteins. They also have family-owned dairies in Wisconsin (Darlington Ridge Farms) and California (P&D Family Dairy). The West Coast dairy raises all of its calves on-site, and the other two dairies send calves to Deer Creek Calf Ranch in Dalhart, Texas to be raised.
“[The calf ranch does] a phenomenal job at raising calves,” says Jody Cole, the Texas dairy manager. “We are not set up at this time to raise our own hutch calves.”
The heifer calves for both the Texas and Wisconsin dairies return to the Texas site between 6 to 7 months of age. At that point,
High Noon manages and coordinates all vaccinations and breedings until the Wisconsin heifers return home as springers.
The Texas operation typically runs at capacity; 4,400 heifers on feed year round takes a great team to raise healthy calves, Cole says.
“Our ultimate goal is to produce the heifer we would want to go out and buy,” he explains. “Well-conditioned, solid health traits and confirmation to last in the Texas weather.”
It takes a wealth of coordination to streamline multiple locations, but Cole says they have a well-oiled system in place. The team replicates that efficiency by using genomic testing in the Wisconsin Holstein heifers before they head to Texas.
“Once we receive the data from the genomic testing, we tag and breed anything that tests below average to beef,” Cole says. “The crosses are also mated to eliminate inbreeding and to ensure we use the genetics to its fullest potential.”
High Noon’s goal is for all the Holsteins to be bred at 13.5 months, the crossbreds at 13 months and Jerseys at 11 months.
“This allows the heifers to calve around 21 to 23 months of age, depending on the breed,” Cole says. “As the Holstein influence in the crosses becomes greater, we feel they need a couple more weeks to grow and mature.”
The breeding protocol at High Noon services up to three breedings to sexed Holstein, then two to three more times serviced to sexed beef semen before being marked as a do-not-breed candidate.
“We use a simple lutalyse setup program and achieve 75% pregnancy rate after the second service and 88% after the third service,” Cole says. “So, not many heifers ever see beef semen.”
Tips and Challenges
High Noon uses DairyComp to manage the dairy and Grower and Feedwatch with integrated weigh comp to track feed costs and intakes.
“I think some of the biggest challenges are really just starting to show,” Cole says. “Feed costs are on the rise; surcharges are getting passed on down the line.”
The dairy manager says today’s expensive feed will become next year’s feed inventory, so high feed costs will be felt for a long time.
“For us, the lack of moisture in the Panhandle area has only amplified the problem,” he says. “Consistently good labor the past few years has been difficult, but maybe with the dry weather it’s been easier to manage on less labor.”
Overall, Cole says the big takeaway on raising heifers off-site is establishing solid communication and a great relationship with the custom grower.
“It eases the concerns about growth, health or weather events,” he says. “The calf yards know the daily costs are of high importance for dairies. With high feed prices, we monitor heifer inventory closely. Feeding extra heifers to manage poor health or poor breeding is really expensive.”
Reyncrest Farm
The Reynolds family own and operate Reyncrest Farms in Corfu, N.Y., home to 1,400 cows. The Reynolds say their heifer raising set-up isn’t anything fancy, but they do believe in strategically placing cow people in key areas to ensure the future of their herd is properly taken care of.
“Common sense, such as good nutrition, fresh air, cleanliness,
following vaccination protocols, good communication and identification, are the keys to successfully raising healthy heifers that turn into profitable cows,” says Tyler Reynolds, an owner.
The Reyncrest calves are raised in individual pens in an indoor calf barn that holds 160 calves. The barn is divided into four quadrants with 40 pens in each section. They feed raw whole milk for a minimum of 55 days.
“We prefer to keep calves on milk for 70 days, but sometimes space in the barn doesn’t allow it,” Reynolds says. “During winter, our minimum days on milk is increased to 60 days.”
Reynolds also mixes in replacer to help bring the milk temperature up from traveling outside from the dairy to the calf barn during the winter months.
“We find this also keeps the taste and smell consistent for the calves,” he adds.
The calf barn has ventilation tubes, exhaust fans and 60" fans down the center of the barn.
“Our pens are 12’x4', ” Reynolds explains. “We find this larger pen size allows for cleaner calves and less bedding overall.”
Reyncrest beds with wood chips mixed with shavings in the spring, summer and fall. During the winter, they bed with a wood chip base with straw and shavings on top.
Their calves are fed a 19% protein grain pellet free choice beginning
at 2 days of age, along with free-choice water.
After weaning, the heifers are grouped into pens of 20 calves. They use to wean calves and place them in smaller groups of five to six calves, Reynolds explains, but found weaning with the larger groups resulted in fewer pen moves and changes for the calves.
“We have been very happy with that change,” he says.
Reyncrest has a few different locations for weaned calves on the farm to allow weaning pens to rest in between new groups.
At 5 months of age, calves move to a group of 45 and stay with that group until breeding age.
All of Reyncrest’s heifer calves are recorded in DairyComp 305 and receive a visual ID tag and an RFID tag at birth. The calves are also identified with Holstein USA’s EASYID program. Once weaned, the calves receive a personalized tag that includes the sire, dam and birth date.
Located close in proximity to orchards and fruit processing plants, the Reynolds purchase apple pomace as an inexpensive alternative to some of their forages.
“This allows us to utilize our higher quality forages for milk cows and feed a ‘cheaper’ heifer ration,” Reynolds says. “We are usually pricing grain and ingredient costs regularly, but aren’t willing to sacrifice a lot of quality for price.”
Simple Communication
For Reynolds and their size of operation, they try to keep communication open, but simple.
“Our operation is a little unique, in that our owners are all involved in calf and heifer raising,” Reynolds says. “My brother, Andrew, is the calf and young heifer manager, feeding calves every afternoon, making treatment decisions, pen moves and all management decisions for the calves. My parents feed weaned calves in the mornings and most afternoons. I’m responsible for breeding age heifers, and my sister, Mackenzie, takes care of the prefresh heifers.”
Reyncrest Farms uses employees for helping clean pens, weekend feedings and relief breedings. They use whiteboards in every calf and heifer barn to help communicate anything that needs to be addressed, such as treatments, an ‘off’ calf or any diet changes.
“We have found that keeping things simple sometimes yields the best results and leaves little room for error,” Reynolds says.
Reyncrest strives for first breedings at 12 months of age and their five-year average for age at first calving is 22 months.
Reyncrest have found using the highest Net Merit bulls produces the kind of animals they want to milk and keep in their herd.
“Our theory is if we’re spending a little more on semen, we don’t necessarily need to be spending money on genomic testing,” he says.
Herd growth has kept Reyncrest’s heifer cull rate relatively low.
“We don’t sell heifers for breeding, so we try to save the expense on the genomic testing side and just use high-quality genetics on the sire side of things,” Reynolds says.
While it is no small task to raise a calf from newborn to springer, it does take good communication to coordinate each stage of life. Streamlining management decisions not only factors into the future of the herd, but also factors into the overall profitability of the farm.
