Nuffield #6 The Week of Living Danishly (Day 3)
On to day three in Denmark, which dawned with a glorious frosty morning. After a quick stop in Viborg (a charming lakeside town in central Jutland) I went on to the University of Aarhus’s Danish Cattle Research Centre, to speak to researchers about their cow calf contact projects.
Cow calf contact is one of the areas of my Nuffield that I am most excited about, as I really believe that the future will see more dairy farms shifting production to this system. Obviously there will need to be significant changes in how milk and dairy products are sold and marketed, and in how consumers price them, before this can be viable on a large scale, But we have to start somewhere, and so I will be trying to work out through my scholarship a costing system for cow-calf contact, and finding ways to make it feasible.
For those who don’t already know, it is probably best to start with an overview of the different approaches to cow calf contact. All of these systems are already in place in the UK and/or in Europe. One of the smaller Danish milk processors takes milk from two cow calf contact farms (running different systems) and sells it as a branded product in some stores.
Full contact: This system sees calves spending 24/7 with their own mothers, separated only for milking. Some farms using this system may start with once a day milking and then move to twice a day as calves get older. Others will go straight to twice a day, or have robots. Calves may be weaned at 12 weeks or as old as 5-6 months, and there are different approaches to how weaning is done.
Half day contact: Calves spend 12 hours (usually between two milkings) with their mothers and the rest in a calf group. They may be fed additional milk in the time apart. This system can sometimes be adopted as part of the weaning process for full contact calves.
Short contact: Commonly seen as a treatment in research papers. Calves are kept separately but have access to their mothers for a period of time each day, usually either immediately before or after milking.
Fostering: Cows suckle calves, from single up to multiple calves. Freshly calves cows may suckle their own calf, and then take on additional calves when theirs are weaned. Foster cows tend not to be milked, but can support multiple calves.
Calves in their kindergarten- this is an area of the pen that calves can access but cows cannot. Grazed herds use a bigger version to keep calves safe and separate when cows are in the collecting yard. They may receive calf feed in an area like this, or have a rubber floored “activity area” for socialising
Suckler Aunt Project
One of the projects I came to discuss was the suckler aunt project. In this study calves were bought in and fostered onto cows in pairs. Some of the cows had already reared their own calves to weaning, and so were used to suckling.
The project used castrated bull calves, as the project was looking at raising sustainable and organic beef steers (they were all grazed this summer and are fed a clover silage at housing). The cows were all empty cows who were due to leave the herd.
The project looked at different beef meat production, so some of the calves had already been culled for a rose veal type product. Others will be culled later this winter, and there has been an application to wean some and run them through on a grass based system to a mature beef animal. The project hopes to look at eating quality as well as welfare and performance parameters.
By today the remaining cow calf pairs had been housed for two weeks, and were being fed a green ration of TMR in the cow shed. Three cows and their calves shared a pen, and despite being very big I still saw a calf suckling his foster mother.
A cow from the Best of Both Worlds project, the calf behind her is in the kindergarten- note the gate that the calf can walk under but the cow cannot get through
Best of Both Worlds Project
The second project I spoke to researchers about is in its early stages, but is a multifaceted project looking at rearing and weaning of calves suckled on their own mothers. The project runs a control group (calves separated after 48 hours), a full contact, and a half day contact treatment. Cows are milked twice a day.
The PhD student I spoke to is working on a project where the cows are separated from their calves for an hour, and then presented with the option of pushing a weighted gate to gain access. At this point she will have the choice of her own calf or a control calf, and the weight to her calf will gradually increase, testing whether she pushes the heavier weight to access her calf, the lighter weight for the other, or neither.
Each group (and the control group) will also be split into gradual and abrupt weaning categories, and further research is looking at stress levels through saliva testing, and some other aspects of cow behaviour.
The first intake of cows and calves were in the very early days of the project, but it seemed like a really interesting study and one that I am looking forward to seeing the results of.
The two weighted gates and the two calf waiting areas
Lessons Learnt
There is still so much to learn about cow calf contact
Some cows really aren’t motivated by their calf… but others are
Foster cows and calves can have strong bonds and successful partnerships
Feeding colostrum with the three qs (quality, quantity, and quickly) is really important for calves that suckle their mothers/fostered cows
Calves can go from separation and teat feeding back to cows
Milk production in full contact systems seems to vary by farm, but in the project was down to 2-3 litres. Half day contact saw 20 litres +, and cows in the full day contact would drip milk if separated from their calves
When calves were in half day contact and not supplemented with milk, they did not appear smaller than those with full day contact
Cows with full day contact can be reluctant to let down milk in the parlour- some farmers are better at this
Post Nuffield I would really like to do more with this subject, PhD anyone?
Living Danishly
On the way to the research centre it was impossible to to notice that that were a lot of buildings and what looked like a power station. The part of Jutland that I visited today is home to servers from Apple, and Facebook and Google are also present in rural Denmark (this part all comes from a scientist I spoke to today). They collectively account for 10% of Denmark’s electricity usage, and come here because there is plentiful supply (from power stations in continental Europe and hydroelectricity from Norway and Sweden), because it is rural and isolated, because the climate is good for cooling, and because the security risk is low. The stations are very ugly, and I’m not sure how happy the locals are about their presence.
I also had a burning question answered today- about wolves. Germany has wolves, as does Denmark’s Scandinavian neighbours. Wolves have been sighted in Jutland (which shares a land border with Germany) but in small numbers. I was told that a dog walker had come across a big dog wolf on his own, and she had taken photos as he had followed her, seeking company from the dog. Shooting wolves is not allowed, and wolf cubs have been spotted. However, any further migration from Germany seems unlikely as a fence has been erected across the border, to stop German wild boar, potentially carrying swine fever, crossing into wild boar free Denmark and putting its innocent pigs at risk. Denmark has a big and growing deer population, but not large predators. There is no compensation scheme for animals killed by wolves, and a widespread belief that the country is too small to support them.
