Q & A about the project Cow and calf together

Do we really need to research whether cows and calves are good for each other?

The purpose of the project is to develop systems for HOW to solve milk production with cows and calves together and what it means for various sustainability aspects such as animal health, farm finances and the impact on the climate. The project will not decide IF cows and calves should go together. Each individual farm must decide on that.

What is the purpose of this study?

The overall purpose is to evaluate how sustainability aspects such as climate footprint, profitability and animal welfare are affected by having cows and calves together at the beginning of lactation. The study has many sub-goals, e.g. to find out how cows and calves can be integrated into systems with automatic milking, whether it is an advantage to have quarter milking, whether it affects the fertility of cows to go with the calf, how the calves born in the project become like adult cows, etc.

How is calf health included in the project?

According to both practical experience and scientific studies, the risk of infectious diseases in calves increases when the group size increases and if calves are kept in the same spaces as the adult animals. This may be because, for example, pathogens that the adult animals can handle cause the calves to get sick. Therefore, there is a concern that the calves will get sick if they walk with the cows. We also get many questions about the risk of the calves being injured when they are among the cows.

Will there be more personal injuries and accidents when the calves walk with the cows? Cows can be very protective of their calves. Is there a risk that the calves will hurt themselves on the interior?

The researchers and stable staff working on the KoKalv project spent a lot of time designing management routines that minimize the risk of dangerous situations where the cows protect the calves. There was an incident the first summer where a cow walked between a calf (not her own) and staff who were supposed to catch the calf to treat it for an infection. The staff managed to escape, thankfully, and the routines for catching calves were changed. It has also happened on one occasion that a calf jumped on a visiting researcher who was leaning forward, the person lost his balance, fell forward and hit his head but did not require treatment.

Small calves cannot walk on slatted floors that are designed for cows. In the barn where this study is being conducted, there is no slatted floor, but in other places it has worked to put a mat on the slat with narrower gaps that provide protection against calves getting stuck. In the barn where round 5 is being conducted, there are automatic scrapers. When the calves are small, they are only driven if a person is there to supervise the animals, but there have been no incidents. The calves quickly learn to move when the scrapers are running and we have even seen calves standing on the scraper and riding it, so our experience so far is that it works well.

What kind of fencing do you have outside in the summer?

It has worked well with just an extra lower wire on the fence while they are in the same pasture.

Have you looked at how many times per day the calf sucks compared to how many times per day it is fed during early weaning?

Yes, the suckling frequency has been studied on suckling cows and the KoKalv project will be able to describe what it looks like for dairy cows in this particular housing solution, and how it changes as the calves get older. There is of course also data from dairy calves that are fed milk in an automatic milker to compare with. The data has not been analyzed yet.

Is there any economic calculation of how the loss of milk in the robot compares to feeding the calves from day 1, including the work effort in feeding the calves?

Yes, there is a thesis on exactly that, done by livestock agronomist Karolin Rask.

How has the growth been on suckling calves compared to weaned calves?

There have been differences between rounds (a total of five rounds), which the researchers in the project are a little surprised by. It is expected that calves that can suckle freely grow faster than calves that receive limited milk supply, but in one of the rounds there was no difference. It was carried out entirely during the stable period and part of the explanation could be that the calves were more exposed to viruses. The energy may have been used to stay healthy, instead of growing quickly. There is also a large variation in growth between calves and this means that we need data from more KoKalv pairs to be able to draw firm conclusions.

Isn't it obvious that calf and cow feel better together, do we really need to research it?

There are many details that farmers who are interested in having cow and calf together need information about, in order to be able to make decisions about their farm and avoid unnecessary mistakes that affect the animals, people or the farm's economy. Research plays an important role here. It involves everything from housing solutions, whether there is a risk of problems with infection and how the animals treat each other when new calves enter the group, how long the cow and calf should have contact (these cows produce so much