Nuffield #13 Cow Calf Contact Research in Norway

And here we go again… after a break through the summer while we focussed on our 12 weeks of cow breeding at home, I am back on the Nuffield journey with a ten day trip that will take me from Norway to Sweden and on to Finland.

Later this year I will venture to countries that DON’T have an Arctic territory, but for now my Nuffield scholarship is firmly fixed in the north, where drivers are polite, the winter is long, and everything is exceedingly expensive.

Norway is a formidably large country, with a low and well dispersed population. I’m sticking to the east, where the roadsigns include major towns in Sweden.

Like Denmark these countries have strict biosecurity rules, which means that I’ve started off with a no-animal day. Norway is free of tuberculosis, Johne’s, BVD, and salmonella (apart from the odd sporadic case) and so has good reason to be careful. This status was achieved through eradication programmes and regular screening monitors for any change.

Today I visited the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, the other side of the Oslofjord from where I am staying on the outskirts of Tonsberg.

At the NVI I was lucky enough to meet Julie Johnsen, one of the world’s leading cow calf contact researchers, plus a PhD and a postdoc student at the university. The NVI has been involved in numerous trials, and is about to start a new project later this week. Their research also involves commercial farms in Norway.

As well as their clean health, Norwegian dairy farms are unique in that the average herd size is 30 cows, and they (like Canada) have quota and still practice tie stall systems. These are being phased out, and largely replaced with robotic systems. Interestingly, the researchers have been told by the main robot installer that many of the farms changing system are building sheds that are designed to be suitable for cow calf contact. All farms here have to graze for eight weeks, but the winter is long, dark, and cold, so any cow calf contact system will need to take suckling in a housed system into consideration. The small size of the herds means that walking distance is rarely a concern for grazing systems.

Milk in Norway is purchased by the farmer owned co-operative Tine, who are obliged to collect milk from any farmer in the country, and in turn sells milk to anyone wanting to process, as well as making their own products. I am drinking a Tine kefir as I write this! Tine don’t currently offer a premium for farms that practice cow calf contact, but they are very interested in the practice. They have a team of farmer advisors, and the demand for advice on CCC has been one trigger for Tine investing in research. The interest in CCC in Norway is driven by farmers, and a recent Masters project found that 3% of dairy farms here practice CCC, and a lot more are interested in starting.

There is one company here that offers a premium for CCC- but for cheese and meat, not for liquid milk- and they have two farmer suppliers, both of whom I will visit tomorrow. Animal welfare and a natural system are key drivers for farmers to start CCC, and they also say that they are interested in the increased weight gains that they can see in beef and bull calves.

Many beef and bull calves are sold at weaning to specialist rearers, and slaughtered at 2 years old. Some are finished earlier, and some dairy farms will rear their own on farm. The majority of the beef eaten here is from the dairy herd. There is no veal industry.

Over 90% of the national herd are Norwegian Red, with the remainder mostly Jersey and Holstein. The universirty farm is all NRs.

The most recent project at NVI was SUCCEED, which looked at how best to run cow calf contact in a housed system, and was driven by farmer demand to learn how best to implement this system. Crucially the project worked on cow driven contact; the calves were kept segregated and the cows were able to access them through an electronic gate. The calves could not get out into the main cow housing area, and also had their own kindergarten area.

The cows averaged eight visits a day to the calves, and were milked through robots. Their milk production averaged 11kg/day, compared to a standard for the breed of 25-30kg/day. Calf growth was 1.1-1.2kg DLWG, and although it slowed at weaning it remained high.

Like other trials and the experience of commercial farmers, the researchers said that weaning was challenging and they tried an abrupt and a slower process. One Norwegian farmer who ran a CCC farm has actually stopped as the noise at weaning was bringing complaints from his neighbours.

There is currently a push in Norway on getting more milk into calves, and there is a strong focus on colostrum management, with farmers encouraged to feed 4 litres within hours of birth. Research has shown that 30% of calves reared in CCC systems have a failure of passive transfer, so there is a strong focus on colostrum management. Trials here have shown that calves can get sufficient intake from suckling, but only those that are good drinkers. Farmers are advised to keep a very careful watch of calves and to supplement feed any that aren’t vigorously drinking.

Recent PhD work has surveyed commercial farmers practicising CCC and found it happening across organic and conventional, tie stall and free stall, robot and parlour, seasonal and AYR calving. The same student also carried out a trial of pasture based CCC on a commercial farm, setting up groups and collecting data while the cows and calves grazed their summer farm in the mountains.

A new trial starting here will work with cows and calves having constant contact, plus control groups of separated calves. Tests will include passive transfer, telomere wear, and a straw play test which will observe play behaviour in calves under different treatments when straw is added to their pen. I can’t wait to see the results of this project, which will last several years and encompass biochemical markers as well as social behaviour.