In today’s episode of What’s Happening, I’ll show you a tried-and-true trick to quickly assess attention to detail when it comes to calf housing.  Our first photo comes from a dairy farm near Nashville, Tennessee in the United States.  

You’ve probably heard of Nashville, so let’s take a trip to the home of Country Music. Nashville is world famous as the home for country music and The Grand Ole Opry.

What stands out to you in this picture of this young calf in a hutch bedded with straw?  Well, it’s pretty clear, I think, in this photo – wet knees.  Wet knees are my “telltale” sign that bedding management is less than optimal.  Strolling along hutches, I usually keep a casual count of calves with wet knees and those without.  More than a few wet kneed calves and it indicates a change needs to be made. Wet knees are not normal, nor are they acceptable.  In this photo, there are no lesions on the calf’s knees, but continued exposure to water, urine, and manure from dirty bedding can certainly predispose calves to problems on the skin and joints.

Here are a few more examples of calves with wet knees…

And dry ones. Of course, calves produce urine and when calves are in hutches, that urine is often excreted inside the hutch.  There, it has to move away from the calf either moving down into the ground, or if the hutch area is sloped, away from the bedding.  

Here’s an example of a farm in China where calves are housed on top of sand that is sloped away from the hutch, which keeps the calves much drier and more comfortable.  Note the sand is on top of concrete which makes clean up much easier on this farm.  This farm in California also slopes their hutches and houses calves on sand.  Guess what?  Clean knees.

Here are a few resources for a deeper dive into the topic of calf jackets.  Feel free to stop the video and scan the QR code to go to each resource.

Remember, calves crave clean… knees that is!.  

Clean knees are an index of calf comfort… any calf with dirty knees should “stick out like a sore thumb”, as they say. Well, that’ll do it for today. Thanks for watching, and see you next time!