Nuffield #12 Foster Cow Dairying in Canada

Cow calf contact dairying is a key part of my Nuffield Scholarship as I look at ways that we can improve the ethical standards of dairy farming. In Denmark I was lucky enough to visit farms practicing dam contact (calf stays with his or her own mother) and foster rearing (calves are fostered onto cows, sometimes singly or sometimes in pairs or bigger groups). This was harder to do in Canada as I couldn’t track down any farms advertising themselves on this basis, and my prior research of speaking to an expert in the field who is Canadian didn’t yield any farms. However, I asked the Alberta Milk Board to help me find some farms to visit- originally with the intention of pursuing the sexed semen angle- and they really pulled it off by putting me in touch with two dairy farmers who had trialled foster cow systems.

Neither farm was currently implementing a foster system, but both hoped to in the future. The first one I visited has tried fostering their bull and beef calves two years’ previously, and had done so at pasture in the summer. They felt that they didn’t have the infrastructure to do it inside, and with winters averaging -20 degrees celsius they can’t keep calves at pasture all year round.

Their trigger for implementing the system was the drop in value of cull cows during the pandemic; it made sense for them to rear the lower value calves on these cows. These calves were sold to calf ranches, and the cows were them sold at auction. The farm ran on a robot system so favoured a simple system with minimal labour input.

Interestingly one motivation to return to the foster system was how much their neighbours liked seeing the cows and calves together. This kept them in the system when the cull cow value lifted.

They fostered 1-3 calves on to each cow depending on her milk production, and kept the calves on the cows for the whole summer. The cows were supplemented with rolled barley and either maintained or gained weight during the period.

The other farm trialled the system in mid winter, because their challenge was the reverse; they had no pasture access on their main farm. The set up was inside a shed. They stopped as they felt they didn’t have enough facilities to do it, and they wanted to see how those calves performed as cows before continuing.

This farm was motivated by calf health and welfare. In the Canadian winter they felt that continuous access to warm milk was good, and that the calves would receive better antibodies suckling from cows than through pooled colostrum.

Cow selection was on health traits; negative for BLV and Johne’s, low somatic cell count, high butterfat, producing 32 to 36 litres of milk per day, but destined for culling based on fertility or hoof health. As the trial advanced they also looked at temperament as a selection criterion, and in total six cows and 21 calves were involved.

All of the calves were heifers (which, again, makes this trial almost the opposite to the other farm!), they had access to an outside area with bale shelters and an internal kindergarten area. The farmer felt that the calves quickly copied the cows’ eating and drinking behaviour.

The calves had marginally better health and growth than those hand reared, and the cows looked good throughout. They practiced abrupt weaning which they didn’t necessarily think was the best method. Calves were bottle fed until there were enough calves ready to be fostered on in one go, some took to suckling immediately and others needed to be taught.

Ideally this farm would like to foster all of their calves, but they were keen to stress that they didn’t want to do it for consumer perception; their driver was the best outcome for their animals.