It may seem far-fetched and highly impractical in the U.S. But raising calves with their dams is happening at a growing pace on commercial dairies around the world.
“It’s a topic that won’t go away,” said Nina von Keyserlingk, well-known animal welfare researcher at The University of British Columbia. “Media and consumer interest in the way dairy calves are raised continues to rise.”
At the 2022 Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin annual meeting, von Keyserlingk shared the findings of two systematic reviews that summarized the research on extended cow calf contact on cow and calf behavior, welfare, performance, and health.
She said the collective results were overwhelmingly positive for both cows and calves in terms of health, behavior, welfare and production. Among the results [summarized in greater detail here and here] were:
- When given the opportunity, calves nursing their dams consumed a minimum of 10L of milk per day, and up to 12-14 L in some cases – about the same peak milk allowance that’s dialed into many modern autofeeder protocols.
- Calf health was improved for dam-reared calves, particularly relative to scours incidence. Dam rearing had little effect on pneumonia incidence compared to separated calves, and allowing calves to nurse their dams was found to have no influence on Johne’s disease incidence.
- Cows nursing their calves often produced less salable milk compared to non-nursing dams during the weeks in which calves were allowed to suckle. But total lactation production generally was not affected by calf-rearing. In some cases, cows allowed to raise their calves produced more salable milk across their lactations.
- Mastitis incidence and related udder-health metrics in dams were lowered or unaffected when they raised their own calves, likely because calves suckle more frequently than typical twice- or three-times-a-day milking regimens.
Nonetheless, full-circle return to dam-rearing calves on dairies is one of gradual adaptation. Norwegian researcher Julie Foske Johnson shared with the PDPW audience that, 11 years ago, dairy farmers in Norway rejected the research she and her team were conducting on dam-rearing calves.
“Today, about 1,400 of our 7,000 dairy farms are embracing the practice,” she shared. “Cow-calf contact systems are the way of the future in our country.”
The Ethical Dairy near Gatehouse of Fleet, Scotland, has built their entire enterprise upon the social messaging related to allowing cows to keep their calves. Herdsman Charles Ellet said the business wraps farm tours, farmstead cheese manufacturing, and direct fluid milk sales around their foundational 140-cow organic dairy herd, which follows a self-described “cow-with-calf” system.
In Denmark, Thise Dairy pays a premium price to herds that rear their calves with their dams. The organic milk cooperative caters to consumer preferences with specialty labeling of milk from those herds, alongside product lines from grass-fed herds and A2 milk.
Thise member Jesper Toft Bitsch individually raises the calves from his 220-cow robotically milked Holstein herd near Aulum, Denmark in hutches. But the young Danish dairy farmer is supportive of the dam-rearing practice.
“I would have to do some major reconfigurations to make that system work in my herd,” shared Bitsch. “But I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”
The team at The Ethical Dairy admitted their initial attempt at raising calves with their dams on their organic farm was “financially disastrous,” partly because they were trying to change too many things at once. They scrapped the practice for a few years, and set a three-year feasibility deadline when they implemented a new, herd-wide system for cow-calf contact in 2016.
That time, it worked, and the lessons they learned are documented in the dairy’s blog and in a recently published book, A Dairy Story, written by the business’ owners, David and Wilma Finlay.
Calves don’t necessarily reside with their dams full-time in the herds currently utilizing cow-calf systems. In many cases, gates and separate runs allow cows and calves to see one another at all times, but limit access to suckling to prescribed feeding times when they are allowed to physically be together.
Much can be learned from those already following dam rearing, said von Keyserlingk, who noted a handful of herds in the U.S. and Canada also are beginning implement it. Ongoing research on the topic is also currently underway in many countries including, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Australia and the U.S., in addition to her work in Canada.
Some of von Keyserlingk’s more recent research reports that North Americans, when they are made aware of the standard practice of separating the calf immediately following birth, place great value on the mother cow-calf relationship. They largely disapprove of cow-calf management systems that involve separating calves from their mothers.
She believes strongly in continuing to study the practice of dams actually feeding their own offspring, declaring, “To this point, we’ve pretty much refused to acknowledge that this could be a workable system.”
But she also looks at such research as an insurance policy of sorts for the dairy industry. “If, down the road, there are expectations that this practice become the norm, then research – which in this case will take far more than a single study - can help pave the way to show how best to implement such as system,” she stated.
