Category: Cows - Brun Ko Farm

Cow Vacation!

1/23/2018

Abby poses for a picture just a few days before being dried off. What a ham!

As you may know, we recently weaned the calves from milk. We also just recently moved them to a group weaning pen.

With the calves off milk and no pigs over the winter, we really don't have a use for all of the milk that Abby makes. Soo, that (along with a few other factors) means it's time to dry her off!

What do I mean,'dry her off?’ Well, the term 'dry off’ basically just means to quit milking. And a 'dry cow’ is a dairy cow that is not currently lactating (making milk).

Like with many other topics we’ve shared on this blog, different farms do different things but dry off time is pretty simple around here.

We simply stop milking. Several factors affect milk production but the most important is stimulation and the regular removal of milk. If the teats are no longer stimulated and milk is no longer removed from the udder it sends a signal to the brain to stop making milk.

At the same time, we also decrease the amount of grain that Abby gets. While the steers live almost exclusively on hay and grass from four months of age on, Abby eats a fair amount of grain every day to support milk production. So decreasing her grain is a good way to slow down/stop her from making milk. She still gets as much free choice hay or grass as she can eat, depending on the season but no more grain.

Abby is usually uncomfortable for 2 or 3 days after we stop milking her but once milk production stops and the body reabsorbs whatever milk was left in her udder, it's vacation time for her!

And it's a nice break for us too!

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

Trivia Night

4/1/2016

How many cups of milk do you think 54 has in her udder??

I love it when blog material falls into my lap. :)

Last week sometime, one of NP’s co-workers, we’ll call him Alex, went to a trivia night and one of the more memorable questions of the night was “How many cups of milk does a cow produce in her lifetime?”

When NP brought this question home to me, I said “Well that depends. What breed is she? Grassfed? Or does she get grain? What exactly was her expected productive life span? Because not all farms and locations are equal. Was this question drawn from recent data? Or was it still hanging around from the 1950’s or 60’s?

And I could go on.

So while I thought it was an impossibly silly question to expect a very exact answer to – it did get me (and NP’s coworker) thinking! In the middle of chores and milking two cows, I started doing mental math – which quickly upgraded to calculator math!

Abby and 54 each give us 6+ gallons per day. And that is a fairly average amount of milk for the Jersey breed. So, if there are 16 cups in each gallon and one cow gives 6 gallons per day for 305 days of the year (they are on vacation for the other 60 days!!) then that is 29,280 cups of milk in just ONE year.

We had to get a calculator out to help with the math!!

6 gal X 16 cups X305 days= 29,280 cups of milk per cow per year

We took that one step further and guessed at a 4 year average productive life. A cow starts milking around 2 years of age, so a cow that has milked for 4 years would be 6 years old. Many cows live much longer!

Taking our 29,280 cups of milk times 4 years gave us 117,120 cups of milk. Which isn’t quite the 200,000 that trivia night suggested but it’s still quite a lot!! And Holsteins would probably hit that 200,000 mark quite easily.

I don't know about you, but what that leaves me with is a sense of wonder and appreciation for the animals that provide us with such bountiful, delicious food!

Alex, thank you for the material! And I hope to see you at the farm someday soon!!

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

Shots in the Dark

3/27/2016

If you happened past my in-law’s at 9pm last Friday and saw lots of lights and strange happenings in the pasture – no, we weren’t invaded by aliens – Dallas, NP and I were vaccinating the heifers.

Why at 9pm?

Because, NP and I both have off farm jobs and by the time the work day was done and all other essential items were crossed off the list, that was the time that we had left!

Vaccinations are a key part (but not the only part) to preventing illness and we take it very seriously. We work with our veterinarian to determine which vaccines we need to give our critters (cows, horse, and dogs!) as well as when and how to give them.

Being a vet for Brun Ko Farm is probably hard work due to my curious nature and need to know! I have to give Dr. Jodie a shout out for being so patient and thorough in answering my questions!

NP and Dallas set up our makeshift working chute while I picked up pizza for a late supper!

So, most recently, at 9pm on a rainy night, NP and Dallas set up a working chute and we vaccinated the heifers that are due to calve in May with a vaccine called Scour Bos. I won’t get into all the nitty gritty of it, but buying vaccines can feel kind of like buying cereal in a grocery store – a handful of companies all manufacture similar but slightly different products. Scour Bos is one of several vaccines that is given to a pregnant cow but that actually benefits the calf en utero. You see, mothers have this fantastic ability to provide immunity to their offspring. They do this in utero via the placenta where antibodies pass from mother to babe and also after the calf is born via the antibodies they provide in their colostrum, or first milk. Read more about colostrum here.

On this particular night, we were giving a vaccine that will protect the (unborn) calves against several different causes of scours, aka diarrhea.

Other things we vaccinate for at Brun Ko Farm include blackleg & some common bovine respiratory viruses. Different farms and different parts of the country face different challenges – meaning each farmer has to work with his or her vet to develop a vaccination schedule that is best for their unique situation.

We also replaced Jersey's weaner (nose ring) that night. Yes, her name is Jersey. Which is ironic because she is the only bovine we have that is not full blooded Jersey!

A little known fact is that vaccines have withdrawal times just like antibiotics or other drugs. A withdrawal time is a minimum amount of time that must pass after a drug is given and before the animal goes to slaughter. One reason this probably doesn’t come up in discussion much is that vaccines are generally given early in life and at specific, scheduled time points – none of which are anywhere near slaughter age. I will write more about withdrawal times in the future.

In addition to deciding which vaccines are best for our herd, we also have to make sure that we are giving them in an appropriate manner so that the vaccine has the best chance of doing its job and also to ensure that we aren’t compromising the quality of meat in the future.

Morris Veterinary Center PSC does a good job of further explaining how vaccines work and also the protocols that farmers follow to ensure that they are administering the vaccines properly. You find that info at http://www.morrisvetcenter.com/morrisvet/Livestock/Bovine-Vaccinations.asp

**Thank you Dallas for the pictures!!**

With that, thanks for reading and as always,

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

What is that thing?!

3/7/2016

What is that thing in her nose?!

This is one of the most common questions we get from visitors at Brun Ko Farm. And I have to admit, our heifers look pretty ‘punk-rock’.

As much fun as it is to tell visitors that those nose rings are a part of the heifers’ personal style, reality is a little less enchanting. Those nose rings (called Edming weaners or suckers) actually prevent the heifers from sucking on each other’s developing udders.

Why don’t all heifers have weaners? Because not all heifers develop this bad habit.

Why did ours? Well, my theory is that in large part, it’s because some of them were raised in a group pen as calves. Sucking on things is a very natural thing for calves to do. When their bottle is empty, they turn to other objects. Gates, bottle holders, buckets, fingers, and if available fellow animals.

Generally, the habit goes away as they transition onto solid food only. Now, I really can’t explain why group raised calves seem to hold on to the habit except that they must get some sort of satisfaction from sucking on each other that they don’t get from inanimate objects. In fact one heifer can actually induce lactation or a ‘pseudo-lactation’ in the heifer that they are sucking on. So in essence, the heifer doing the sucking is eventually rewarded with ‘milk’ from the udder of the heifer they are sucking on.

Here I am pointing to one of the bumps I mentioned - these weaners obviously aren't very strong (and probably not very effective!) as all the other bumps wore off!

___And this ‘pseudo-lactation’ is why the sucking behavior is a problem in the first place. Heifers that get sucked on, often suffer damage to their udder, which affects true lactation later in life. They can also develop mastitis (an infection of the udder) and I have even seen heifers die due to this behavior and the infections and problems that it can cause. This is one reason why I feel very strongly about raising our bottle calves in individual hutches. You can read my post about calf accomodations here.

Because of these rather doom and gloom side effects, we do anything and everything we can to stop the sucking behavior. These temporary orange plastic weaners are actually our first step. Let’s use 57 and 58 (two of our heifers) as an example. Let’s say that 58 has been sucking on 57’s udder. The first time (and every time) that 58 tries to suck after we give her this orange weaner, 57 should feel uncomfortable because of the bumps and spikes and kick 58 away. So basically, as long as 58 has this weaner in, she shouldn’t be able to suck on any of the others. The theory is that while these weaners won’t stay in forever, they will stay in long enough to break the habit.

The weaners come in two parts. This shows what they look like assembled. The u shaped bar is the part that goes in the heifer's nose. You then bend the prongs of the bar back to hold it in place.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case with our critters. We even tried separating the worst perpetrator of the bunch for a couple of months. 58 lived with the horse for a while. And Rusty (the horse) doesn’t take much misbehaving so our theory was that not only was she separated from her cohorts but that he would put her in her place should she try out the habit on him.

Well, that didn’t work either. So we use these rather harsh looking metal Edming weaners. They are a more permanent solution and have more 'poke' to them, eliciting a stronger response.

The first time that you put one in you do have to pierce their nose in order to do it. However it heals much like any other piercing and if you have to replace it down the road (which we will be doing this weekend :/ ) it’s not much different than changing out a pair of ear rings. Except for the restraining a 700 – 800lbs animal to do it! Normally, we would put them in a stanchion much like we do when milking them and it is very low stress for the animal and the handler both. Unfortunately, they are currently in a pasture with no access to a headlock so we are going to have to get creative with gates. IF we have an extra set of hands to run a camera I will share pictures with you next week!

Until then,
Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

From the Mouths of Babes

2/18/2016

Over the past few months, we have had some fun groups visit us here at Brun Ko Farm. I always enjoy seeing our farm through the eyes of others. Visitors also tend to raise some really good (and sometimes challenging) questions.

This past weekend a very sharp 11 year old girl asked me: “Where are the boy cows on the farm?”

I should have known that this was a trap. Because, on hearing that we don’t have any ‘boy cows’ on the farm (besides bottle calves), the next question was: “So, how do you get the cows pregnant?”

11 year old girl.

Unwavering.

How do you get the cows pregnant?

Now, after several college level animal reproduction classes and 4 years or so of breeding dairy cows for a living, I know this answer inside and out.

Until an unfamiliar 11 year old girl asks.

What’s appropriate for an 11 year old? What does she already know? What do her parents think she should know? If I’m honest, that last one is really the kicker. I don’t want any trouble!

Luckily, this time around, the girl’s grandma jumped in with a couple of comments that let me know this girl had at least a little background in the topic and I was clear to openly discuss. But it got me thinking – how am I going to handle this in the future? How do I remain honest (because no, the stork doesn’t bring babies!)  and yet not make any parents shudder and run away with hands covering child’s ears?  Beyond just researching age appropriate material and language (that’s the easy part) – how do I gauge in 30 seconds or less the parents’ comfort level! I have yet to figure all of this out but in the mean time I thought I might as well turn it into a blog post.

**Please note: this is written with adults in mind – there is nothing graphic but if anatomically correct terminology bothers you … re-join us next week :)

So how do we get cows pregnant without a bull? We use artificial insemination of course! Why use A.I.? Because bulls are DANGEROUS! Especially Jersey bulls. Jersey cows are fairly docile and curious but the bulls are some of the meanest around. Another reason for using A.I. is to increase genetic diversity in your herd. Instead of using 1 or 2 bulls to breed the whole herd you can use as many different bulls as you like and switch up the lineup from year to year.

Not my cows!! I borrowed this picture from DairyNZ but you get the idea. A cow being ridden, as is happening in this picture, is the gold star in terms of signs of heat. http://www.dairynz.co.nz/animal/reproduction/heat-detection/

With that said, A.I. is a lot of work! To start with, somebody (specially trained handlers) somewhere (bull studs) has to collect and freeze the semen from the bulls. Once this is done, the semen is shipped to people like me who pick out bulls based on an array of stats and pictures listed baseball card style but in a catalog. Once the little straws of semen arrive, they are stored in a liquid nitrogen tank until the cow is ready to be bred. We call this being ‘in heat’. Basically being ‘in heat’ means she is in the part of her cycle where she is about to ovulate (release an egg). This is also the time when she is most receptive to being bred whether by the bull or by an A.I. technician. Catching them ‘in heat’ is usually the hardest part of A.I. breeding. There are some very obvious visual signs like when other cows jump on their rump much like a bull would do or when they have a significant change in their behavior or a temporary drop in milk production. Some cows show ALL of these signs. However, some cows only show one of these signs ONE time each heat cycle so if you aren’t watching at exactly the right time, you miss it. And some cows don’t show ANY signs at all!

The semen is stored in liquid nitrogen tanks like this one.

Ok, so you’ve found a cow in heat. NOW what? Well, now you warm up the straw filled with semen in a warm water bath and then load it into your AI gun. Gun?! That sounds scary right?? It’s not. An AI gun is just a thin metal rod that is small enough to fit through the cervix of the cow without causing harm. I should also mention that the rod is covered with a disposable plastic sheath that has a rounded tip. This for sanitation - the plastic sheath is changed in between every cow - no exceptions. It is also covers any sharp edges to protect the cow!

The blue end that I am pointing to is the end that goes in the cow - to deposit the semen you press the plunger on the other end.

Loooong pink glove (aka breeder's sleeve)!

Now that you are prepared to breed the cow, the important thing is to keep the loaded gun warm and to work quickly – once the straw is warm you have 10 minutes max to get the job done.
Up until now we’ve stayed pretty clean but that’s all about to end. Now it’s time to pull on that looong pink glove and gently insert your lubed (yes lubed – we’re not jerks!) hand into the cow’s rectum. I know that all sounds very mean but a cow’s rectum/intestine are rather large and easily accommodates a human arm – maybe not a sumo wrestler arm – you do have to be realistic. But why do this in the first place?? Because the intestinal walls are thin enough that we can feel the cow’s reproductive organs through them. This allows trained breeders to quickly and safely guide the AI gun through the vagina and cervix and juuuust inside the uterus where the semen is then deposited. And that’s it! Now all that’s left is to gently remove the gun from the cow, return her to the herd and clean up!

**This is by no means a tutorial for breeding cows – if you want to learn this task please work with a knowledgeable, experienced, technician and/or take a class!**

And on that note ..

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

P.S. Special thanks to that 11 year old girl! Never stop asking questions!!

Meet Our Herd: 26160

2/7/2016

26160, affectionately known as AJ, has a unique position in our herd. AJ is Abby's 2nd calf, and the first calf born at Brun Ko Farm! As such, she has always been just a tad (read: a lot) spoiled. NP makes it a point to ‘make friends’ with all of the critters on the farm but AJ is by far the most receptive to his attempts. She’ll push through the crowd every time, to get front and center at the gate where NP is handing out ear scratches.

AJ (26160) enjoying a sunny corner of the barn.

AJ is approaching 2 years old and is pregnant with her first calf! She joined the ranks of the other heifers a month or so ago when she was confirmed pregnant and received her ear tags! Now, most calves are given ear tags when they are born. This is important for quick and easy identification. However, AJ being the only one on the place with no tags, a fair bit younger than the rest of the herd, and having her own particular attitude, we weren’t too worried about losing track of her! And we still really aren’t but after Lily (AJ’s half sister) was born, we decided it was about time that AJ graduate and get ‘ear rings’ like the rest of the girls ;).

Hangin' with the 'big girls'. AJ is the one sandwiched in the middle :)

AJ last fall - can you see a bit of her attitude??

AJ currently lives in the same pen with Abby and 54. She might have the humans at Brun Ko wrapped around her finger but she tends to be at the bottom of the totem pole when grouped with the rest of the heifers so we put her in the pen with the more bunk space and less competition at meal time! In fact, Abby and 54 are fed in the stanchions, so AJ has only herself to blame if she doesn’t get her fair share of the grain.

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

Liquid Gold

1/28/2016

Colostrum even looks like liquid gold! The jug on the left holds colostrum while the jug on the right is 'regular' milk. Can you see the difference?

Exactly one time per lactation each of our cows produces colostrum. Or as I like to think of it: Liquid Gold. This designation isn’t due to monetary value, although it does command a pretty penny if you are able and willing to sell it. The real value of colostrum comes when it is in the tummy of a new born calf!

Colostrum is on my mind because, as many of you know, we just had a new calf and I always have that moment of stress wondering if the mama cow will have enough colostrum for her calf!

Antibodies bind to antigens (e.g. bacteria & viruses) and inactivate/destroy them. Diagram credit: Indiana University: Purdue University Indianapolis

Colostrum is the very first milk that a cow (or really any mammal) gives after giving birth. Most of the time, colostrum is thicker and yellower in color than ‘normal’ milk. Most importantly, it is a powerhouse of nutrition and immunity. Colostrum has more fat and protein in it than regular milk to help provide the calves with a boost of energy to get started. However, the really important thing is that colostrum contains antibodies (IgG) produced by the mother. Antibodies are proteins that help fight illness. These antibodies from colostrum are all that a baby calf has to protect itself in the first few weeks of life. They are born with little to no immunity and require several weeks to begin building their own system that is capable of responding to threats on its own.

I sure am glad my humans fed me lots of good colostrum!

So, colostrum is pretty magical stuff. It is absolutely vital to the well being of the newborn calf and tends to have an effect on the long term health of the animal as well. But, just feeding a calf colostrum isn’t always enough. The right amount has to be fed at the right time! Calves need to get at least a half gallon of colostrum in the first 2 hours of life. We have Jerseys so a half gallon is about all they can handle at one time but larger breeds like Holsteins often get a whole gallon!

Why the first 2 hours? Because that is when the calves’ bodies are most receptive to the transfer of antibodies. Colostrum is still beneficial up to 12 hours after birth but it becomes less and less effective the older the calf is at the time of feeding. Because of this, we feed a half gallon immediately after birth for optimal effectiveness and another half gallon 10-12 hours later for good measure.

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

Weaning Time

1/3/2016

Happy New Year! With each new year tends to come a lot of change. We spend time reflecting on the previous year and set resolutions or goals as to how we can better ourselves in the coming year. That’s no different here on the farm. This year we are looking at some rather large changes but today I am going to talk about a change that we dictate but that affects the calves the most. Every 2 months or so, we wean our bottle calves. This is time of great change for them! Not only do we take milk out of their diet, they also move to a different home, and learn to socialize with other calves.

Several factors, including feed intake, age, health status and the weather all play a part in determining when calves get weaned. Although we would never wean a calf that was sick, I would say feed intake is easily the most important factor in deciding when to wean calves. Why is this? Well, if a calf was sick or otherwise unhealthy, they also would not be eating an adequate amount of feed for us to consider weaning them.
What is that magic level of feed? For Jersey calves, the recommended level of creep feed (a grain mix specially formulated for young calves) intake is 4 lbs. 4 lbs of feed is about 1 large scoop of feed per day. This seems to typically occur right around 6-7 weeks of age.

This scoop holds 4 pounds of creep feed. This is how much we want the calves to be eating each day before we wean them.

We use a creep feed that is18% protein and is specially formulated to meet the calves nutritional needs and be temptingly tasty!

There are a lot of different methods out there for weaning calves. We like to use a step down process because we think it helps the calves adjust better. This means that instead of cutting the calves off of milk cold turkey, we start by taking away just 1 bottle per day. Meaning the calves still get their evening bottle of milk so that they go to bed with a warm full belly. This lasts for 1 week. We typically see the calves creep feed intake during this week and they also seem to learn what water is! Now, we provide the calves with water from the time that they are 3 or 4 days old and they will splash around in it a bit but very rarely do they drink a significant amount of it until they are 6 or 7 weeks old. And I don’t ever see them empty a bucket in a days time until Week 7, when we start decreasing the amount of milk they get. I speculate that this is because milk has such a high water content that they are able to meet a large portion of their water needs just from their 2 bottles of milk a day. Did I mention that each bottle holds a half gallon of milk?? And that that means, each calf drinks a whole GALLON of milk every day!

This bottle holds a half gallon of milk! Each calf gets 2 bottles per day until weaning time.

At the end of week 7, we take away their evening bottle and at this point they are weaned! That is to say, they no longer have any milk in their diet. They are eating only ever increasing amounts of creep feed and water. After another 3 or 4 weeks we will slowly start introducing hay into their diets as well. However, the changes don’t end there. In order to decrease stress at the time of weaning, we like to leave the calves in their hutches for an extra week if possible. A lot of stressful things occur at this time in the calves lives so it helps them if we can give them time to adjust to each new change.

These boys are officially weaned today.

They will be sold over the next week.

We will start feeding a new group soon.

After a week of eating only solid feed, we then move the calves out of their individual hutches and move them into a group pen. Although they can see each other and ‘talk’ back and forth when they live in their hutches, this is the first time that they actually interact with each other. AND the first time that they have to compete for food. Cows are very social animals and each group of cows has a strong hierarchy. Every time a cow is introduced into a new group it has to find its place with in the hierarchy. This is true even in groups of calves. To help combat this, we make sure that the calves have plenty of space at the feed bunk for everybody to eat at the same time. This helps thwart dominant (bully) calves that try to keep others from eating. While the hierarchy carries over into resting time and play, it usually isn’t too long before you start to see the calves laying in groups. They don’t like to be caught being toooo friendly though ;) They’ll jump up as soon as they see NP or I coming as if to say “You didn’t see that!”

Because of all of the other inherent stresses, we try not to do anything ‘extra’ at weaning time. We leave things like dehorning, castration and vaccination for other points in the calves’ lives! And those topics will all be covered in future posts throughout the year so stay tuned!
And since, we are in a new year, some resolutions NP and I have set include:

Finding some sort of routine that allows up more sleep – as I am typing this at 11pm, I think I have a lot of work to do on this …!
Engaging more with our audience. That’s you! We want to hear your thoughts and answer your questions so feel free to comment here on the blog or on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/brunkofarm. You can also send inquiries and comments via email or our Contact Us page!

Here's to a Happy New Year to you and yours!
Brun Ko Farm

Numbers vs. Names

11/22/2015

As you meet the rest of our herd, you will notice that most of their ‘names’ are actually numbers. This is for many reasons, the quantity of cows that I have worked with in the past, ease of identification and record keeping are all factors but the most RESOUNDING reason that we know our cows by numbers is that early on in my agricultural career, I was told, “Don’t name them. The ones that get names are always the first to die.” It might be superstitious but that has always stuck with me. It reverberates through me every time the topic of naming livestock comes up. Now, that sounds extreme and it is, but the underlying message was important. Don’t get too emotionally attached to any one animal. They aren’t pets and sometimes we have to make difficult decisions about culling, some animals we care for, knowing that they will ultimately end up on our (and/or others) dinner plates, and sometimes animals DO get sick and despite our best efforts, we can’t always save them.

With that said, every dairy farm has a handful of cows that have earned names. If a farmer tells you otherwise, they are lying. Every farmer and farm worker has a favorite cow. I have one but I’ll never tell you which one it is!

Over time, despite my reservations, those around me have named a few of our critters anyway. Currently, we have an Abby, an AJ, a Jersey (yes, that’s her name) and most recently, a Lily. I am beginning to ease up on my stance because let’s be honest, I get attached to them regardless of the status of their name. However, I don’t know that I will ever fully embrace the practice!

Enjoy,
Brun Ko Farm

Accommodations at Brun Ko Farm

11/9/2015

Every creature on our farm needs a place to live. A shelter. A place to get in out of inclement weather. A place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to hang out. And each animal has varying needs depending on size and age and ability to handle different weather conditions. The horse, the cow, and the older heifers are all on pasture and have free will access to the barn. They can choose where they want to be and when they want to be there. Interestingly, the horse most often chooses to spend his time outside in the open pasture. The rain and snow don’t bother him. In fact, I think he rather enjoys the bath the rain provides. The cattle on the other hand aren’t quite as tough as ‘ol Rusty the Horse. They love the great outdoors when the sun is shining, but if it’s raining you can almost certainly find them hiding out in the barn. And you don’t have to spend all day watching them to know this either. The extra piles of fertilizer left behind in the barn are evidence enough of the extra time spent indoors on the not so nice days!

The bottle calves on the farm also need housing but their needs are a little more particular. They are small, have more delicate immune systems and are more susceptible to changing weather conditions. Because of their special needs, we house them in these strange looking looking box like things called ‘calf hutches.’ :)

Lily is the only calf we have right now but hopefully in a few days all of our hutches will be full with bottle calves!

Now, there are many variations of calf hutches. There are bigger ones and littler ones, homemade, manufactured, plastic, wood, fancy, plain … you get the idea. Despite a variety of makes and styles available, the concept behind all calf hutches is to keep calves clean and dry, warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and all around healthy.

We have chosen to use calf hutches for a variety of reasons. They really provide an ideal environment for each calf.
The ability to give each calf its own individual little house helps prevent the spread of disease. If a calf DOES get sick, the sickness is more likely to be isolated to just that one calf and we can give it extra care to help it recover as quickly as possible. On the other hand, if the calves were all housed in a group pen, any sickness would spread quickly throughout the group. When calves get sick they have very few reserves to help them recover. Not only is it heartbreaking to watch a little calf suffer, but sickness in ‘calfhood’ can have a huge impact on their adult lives too. Cows that were sick as a calf oftentimes produce less milk throughout their lifetime and can have recurring illnesses later in life due to things like decreased lung capacity or adhesions in the body cavity. And steers may take longer to reach market weight and may not reach their full potential due to time and weight lost during those critical early days of life.

The other great thing about calf hutches is that they are able to keep the calves warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Even though they are small, calves are capable of producing a fair amount of body heat. In the small, micro-environment of the hutch, this heat is conserved and the calf is essentially able to heat its own little house! Now, it isn’t going to be 70 degrees in a hutch in the middle of winter, but they definitely take the edge off. I’ve ducked in more than one calf hutch in the wintertime under the pretense of checking a calf but really I was just getting warmed up! Shhh, don't tell NP ;) And we have to remember that calves thrive at different temperatures than you and I do. Seventy degrees is borderline too warm for them while 33 or 34 degrees doesn’t bother them at all!

To make this all work, we also have to provide plenty of clean, DRY bedding like straw or chopped up cornstalks to help insulate them from the cold ground and also to give them something to nestle down into. During really cold spells, we can also put little calf ‘coats’ on the younger calves that have a harder time self-regulating their temperature. And we can cover the front door when it snows or rains or the wind is just too strong!

Lily modeling her new coat. Way too warm for it today but will come in handy when winter weather sets in!

See all that nice bedding? We will add more to create a thicker layer for 'nesting' as the weather cools down!

We use a combination of cornstalks and straw to bed our calves.

In the summertime, the hutch provides the calf with shade and we can open up all of the vents and ‘windows’ on the hutches to create as much air flow through the hutch as possible. We also put a cattle panel ‘fence’ in front of each hutch in the summertime so we can open up the doors of the hutches and the calves can have a little extra room to play and also take advantage of any breezes.

Holstein bottle calves that we raised last summer enjoying the sunshine and breeze!

Here you can see vents in the backs of the hutches. They are closed now but can be opened in the summer.

You can see in these pictures, the hutches also have a bottle holder (time saver for us!) and bucket holders so the calf can have free choice access to feed and water all day long! Also, the hutches are movable, so we can adjust their location depending on season and it is easy to clean them out in between groups of calves as we can move the hutches to the side and clean out with the tractor. Furthermore, the plastic material they are made out of is washable meaning we can wash and sanitize them in between groups of calves and/or as needed.

Look mom! No hands!! :)

So, when you are wrapped up in a blanket sipping a cup of hot chocolate this winter, you can rest easy knowing that our calves are contentedly napping while nestled in their little hutches with a belly full of warm milk!

And when that time comes, I’ll be sure to share pictures!

Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm