Avoid car-crash calvings for success

Paying attention to transition cow management will help minimise car-crash calvings – that was the message from John Anderson, Double A Dairy, Idaho, speaking at the Genus 20:40 conference in Edinburgh.

Drawing on his experience of managing more than 14,000 Holsteins, being milked through four double 50 parallel parlours, Mr Anderson said the creation of a centralised calving unit, equipped with a specialist team of staff for dry cows, fresh cows and calves, had paid dividends.

“Building a centralised calving facility has allowed us to focus a little bit more on our transitional programme, and it has allowed us to train and develop skilled employees to implement our protocols,” he explained.

The unit has been designed to minimise group changes and improve calving procedures, by moving stock to a calving pen at the time of calving, with strict protocols for newborn calves.

“We try as much as we can to keep groups together, and we have seen a big improvement in our transitional health through moving these cows less often. We decided not to keep the fresh cows in the calving facility for more than 24 hours to keep all the stressors in one period and be done with it and move on,” added Mr Anderson.