What’s Happening #08 – Forage
This photo was taken in 2022 on a dairy farm in Southeastern Paraguay where I visited while attending a conference. Colonel Sommerfeld is a small city but only a short drive from the world-famous waterfalls at Foz do Iguacu. Let’s fly to Colonel Sommerfeld! Like many other farms around the world, calves approaching weaning were offered free choice forage in addition to the grain they had received from early in life. At the time the picture was taken, there were no calves feeding, so it’s easy to see the grain and forage offered separately.
So, what’s happening? We know that calves need to start eating forage at a certain age. But the question is… when offered ad libitum, what would calves rather eat, grain or forage? Perhaps it’s a bit like the question of what WE would rather eat.
The real issue here is, although this is a very common method of feeding calves around weaning time, it’s not optimal.
When offered a choice of what to eat, research shows that many calves eat too little forage, others eat too much, and quite a few eat none at all. Controlling nutrient intake is a real challenge during this time.
How do farmers feed forage to calves? Some offer free choice, as in these pictures from Russia, the UK, and Brazil. Others try to mix with grain. Here we see various mixtures of forage and grain with the idea to convince the calves to eat forage. Most larger farms that I’ve visited simply offer a section of the bunk as forage and a portion as hay as in the picture on the left from China. The photo on the right is our same farm in Paraguay and you can see that all the calves are eating grain, and none are at the forage bunk.
The final two pictures are from the same farm in China. This group top-dressed the forage, expecting the calves would eat forage first and the grain only after the forage was consumed. As you can see, the calves were quite able to push the forage out of the way and go directly to the grain.
Research from the Provimi group and published by Dr. Mark Hill in 2008 shows the variability in voluntary forage intake in calves when offered forage during the first two months of life. You can see that many calves at very little or no forage, while others consumed more. Canadian research suggested that when calves ate more than about 100 grams per day, that the risk of rumen acidosis was less. You can see here that only 8 of the 24 calves in the Provimi study reached this level.
After two months, calves will generally begin eating more forage voluntarily, The average forage intake is about 8 to 10% of total dry matter intake – showing us that calves generally prefer gain to forage.
A better way to manage forage intake is by blending a dry TMR with about 10% forage. This ensures that all calves are getting the same nutrients every day.
Here are a few resources if you’d like to take a “deeper dive” into the topic of forage feeding for calves. Feel free to stop the video and scan the QR code to go directly to the website.
Articles from Penn State Extension and Hoard’s Dairyman discuss the ideas of when and how to offer forage to calves. They are both good and easy reads. If you want to go really deep into the topic of forage and fiber intake in calves, here’s a recent article that I published in the Journal of Dairy Science that discusses voluntary forage intake. Remember, calves crave concentrate, even when they need some forage!
Remember, when calves, like kids, get to select their own diet, they don’t always make the best choices. {eat some ice cream} We can manage their nutrition better than ad lib forage. Well, that’s it for today. Thanks for watching and see you next time!
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