The good, the bad and the bobby - A season of calf rearing in the Waikato.

Before i get into the job, what it entailed and what we learnt, just a small reminder that all my opinions and experiences are formulated from one mid sized dairy farm in New Zealand and don't cover dairy practices in general as these change from farm to farm and country to country.

What is calf rearing?

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The first thing we did when we arrived at the farm was to get organised. We'd wash the sanitiser off the teats, make sure we had enough bottles, sort and label the milk and load up the ATV to get the milk to the babies. This all went smoothly as long as the milking went smoothly, sometimes we didn't have the milk we needed right away, so we'd need to heat up some refrigerated leftovers from the day before.

At the beginning it was simpler, all the babies were in the barn. The calves born that day would get bottle fed Gold milk - this was the first milk the cow produces after calving, colostrum full of antibodies crucial to their survival. The method was easy, pop one leg either side of their head, tilt their heads up slightly and pop in the bottle - some got it right away, draining the 3 litres in minutes... others needed more convincing and a bit more time. Sometimes the hardest part wasn't getting them to drink but to leave us alone while we were feeding the others - we had black boards everywhere so we could keep track of who we fed and what.

Any calves that couldn't (or wouldn't) drink would get tube-fed, this involved feeding a tube down their throat, making sure they swallowed it correctly, we'd then tip up the bottle attached and within minutes we'd have a well fed calf . It seems a bit mean, but as they're born without antibodies they need those immunoglobulins in the colostrum to ensure they can quickly start building their immune system - calves that don't get this vital milk in the first 12 hours are prone to sickness and disease, seriously impacting their quality of life. The first time I did this I was so nervous, one wrong move and i would drown the poor thing in milk but luckily I quickly got the hang of it and they all survived my ministrations!

Day two calves would get silver milk (second milking for mum), and we'd try to move them over to a small multi teat feeder so we could feed up to ten at once. This was chaos, they do eventually get the hang of it but they much prefer to be bottle fed. At 10 days old, if the group was healthy and strong, we'd drop their milk feed down to once a day and give them some Moosly (calf muesli). Once they are a couple of weeks old we moved them onto the milk bar, a whopping 50 teat feeder that they'd be fed from once they were outside.

Before the calves headed outside, first a visit from the vet, those with horns needed them gone and everyone got a 5-in-1 vaccine that protects agains; Pulpy Kidney, Malignant Oedema, Tetanus, Black Disease and Blackleg.

When we had enough older calves together (35 was the preferred number) it was time to get them out into the field. You'd think after weeks of training them that the milk bar was filled with yummy milk, that they might follow it, and most of them do, but there was always that went AWOL. We always found them in the end, but it was better for one to run off and to find it later, rather than go after it only to have another group following behind. Once in the field, some calves would inevitably run straight through the electric fencing, seeming very confused once they'd fallen through to the other side, not working out how to come back. The calves would then be fed with the milk bar pulled on the ATV every morning for the next 8 weeks, moving field every 3-4 days.

Once outside, their daily rations of milk and "Moosly" are slowly increased until the 35 calves share 200L of milk (likely to be made with milk powder at this point), a whole bag of fibre and a whole load of grower pellets. The oldest groups of calves are then sorted ready for weaning, making sure anyone who is struggling moves down a group and any big ones up, at this point the calves were also dewormed. Then the milk is slowly dropped back, until its only a small amount given every other day. Eventually no milk is given at all, and the milkers took over their care - our babies were all grown up.

Now to break things up a bit...

Time to meet Tiny Timmy!

Although she wasn't the prettiest of cows, Tiny Timmy soon became a fast favourite of ours.

Blessed with an underbite and legs that never seemed to grow, Timmy needed some extra care - as her pals grew bigger each week she stayed the same and we often had to save her a prime space around the milk bar to ensure she got her share. This stunning picture of Miss Tim was taken when she was 2 months old and all her friends were set for weaning. There was no point in dropping her down just one group so we loaded her up and dropped her off in the youngest group... where she was once again dwarfed by the others.

So what kind of calves did we rear and what were they used for?

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So you might think that dairy cows are bred with dairy bulls and produce beautiful dairy babies, but that often isn't the case and certainly wasn't for the farm we worked for. On average, a dairy producing cow will have her first calf at the age of two, and have at least two to three more calves before being "retired" from milking due to a drop in production. So in most farms, every 3-4 years all of their heifers will be replaced, if every calf they had was a "dairy" calf (even if half were male), within that time frame the amount of dairy heifers about would be double - and thats not including the mums! It might seem like a good idea, more cows, more milk, right? Well, no. Cows need a lot of grass, milk producing cows need even more and unless a farmer wants to spend all of their profit on additional fodder just to keep them healthy, it just isn't going to work.

So to keep milk production profitable, many of the babies were dairy beef mixes, and for our babies they were mostly Herefords. Some of the lager and stockier Hereford males headed off to sale at a few weeks old - weirdly enough only the boys with darker coats and a full white face were desirable. These calves would be raised till 2 years old before heading to slaughter or for a lucky few, to sire a next generation. The other boys and girls would be raised on farm until heading to the sale after weaning, the heifers to produce more beef calves and the lads to be raised for the table.

Black and white dairy cow

Hereford cow.

Where we worked, just over half of the dairy cows were bred to other dairy breeds, mostly typical black and white dairy cows and jerseys. The little girls (replacement heifers) were destined to grow up and have babies of their own and produce milk for the dairy industry, some would remain on farm and others would be sold after weaning. The dairy bull calves was a completely different matter, if they had the correct markings and four white socks they were safe, if they didn't they were a bobby.

When we started the total amount of calves expected was 400. All in all, we ended up with 9 groups of (roughly) 35 calves that we raised, thats 315 calves. Around, 5% of the calves were still born, so thats 20 accounted for, around 30 strong Herefords went off early to sale, but what about the other 45?

What is a bobby calf and is it a necessary evil?

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According to New Zealands Ministry For Primary Industries, "Bobby calves are those intended for processing within approximately the first week of life for human consumption or pet food". They are the unwanted calves in the dairy industry and as per New Zealand law, they must be slaughtered for use at a processing plant rather than disposed of on site. New Zealand uses the batch processing system, meaning they produce calves in the spring rather than all year round like we do in the UK. This means there just isn't space to raise these calves and no beef producers will buy them to raise as it's just not profitable.

Before any bobby calf can be transported for slaughter there is a strict set of citerea that must be reached -

Suppliers must ensure calves being transported:

• are strong enough to withstand the stress of travel

• are healthy and free of disease, deformity, blindness, or any disability

• have been adequately fed on milk or colostrum

• are alert and able to rise from a lying position and, once up, can move freely. They must not be listless and unable to protect themselves from trampling and being injured by other calves

• have hooves that are firm and worn flat – not bulbous with soft unworn tissue

• have a navel cord that is wrinkled, withered, and shrivelled – not pink or red coloured, raw or fleshy

• are at least 4 days old.

All of that is to say that we had to raise them like any other calf, we'd bottle feed them, care for them, and they'd come running up when we arrive. We'd do this day after day until it was THE day, then we'd have to separate them out of the group and heft them into the cage (over head height for no apparent reason) and the truck would come and take them away. They always got an extra big helping of milk that day and a big fuss. It's amazing how quickly you become numb to something so heartbreaking. The worse days where when the truck failed to come, and in the afternoon we'd take them out of the cage they waited so patiently in before repeating the experience again the next day.

Two of our "bobby" calves were accidentally given milk powder so they were no longer eligible to go until they were weaned at 10 weeks - the amount of joy it gave me was immense the day we added them to an outside group and were able to see them running around.

So are bobby calves a justifiable evil and a necessary part of the dairy industry? No. Obviously no. I do understand that some younger animals might end up at the slaughter, how else could fast food and pet food be so cheap, but surely these babies can have a small chance at life first, a chance to run outside and taste the grass, not just look at it from inside of a barn. Perhaps, we should be producing less anyway; less milk, less meat, less wasted products going straight from supermarket to landfill, less beautiful babies slaughtered at barely a week old to support it. We were lucky where we worked, all the calves were treated the same but that is not the account across the board, so many animal welfare concerns are brought up if you search "bobby calves NZ", articles outlaying new guidelines trying to improve their care, showing they still have far to go.

If other countries can calf year round using different systems to reduce these sacrificial calves why cant NZ. I'm not at all saying that dairy practices are perfect elsewhere, but i certainly won't be following this method should i produce dairy.

What did we learn?

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Firstly I discovered my love of cows. I've always liked cows - I like all animals, but now i'm delighted every time i see one, and when they're babies i'm even happier and i'm determined to make friends. I wouldn't have expected that they'd fill me with the same feeling as i get when i'm around horses but they do. They're just as emotive and loving, especially calves that we reared ourselves - some babies would come and walk with me as we moved them field to field rather than trying to get a drink from the milk bar. We're definitely adding cows to the list of animals we'll have one day, we're just considering using a calf at foot dairy method which allows healthy calves to stay with mum until weaning.

On a practical note, I learnt how to safety tube feed, when and how to give inter-muscular and subcutaneous injections to sick calves, field management for calves and how to feed them for their best growth. Ben learnt how to use a ATV and a lot about reversing with a trailer attached, he also got some practice in driving the automatic farm car. Most importantly he learned that if you drive around with a calf on your lap it will poo on you without fail!