ARCHIVED CALF AND HEIFER NEWS

October 2015

Mixing Milk With Ease: Cups Being Removed From Some Milk Replacers

          Recently, Land O’Lakes announced they will be discontinuing placing cups in their milk replacers.  While this will occur over the next few months, it is a nudge to improve the consistency in how we feed calves.

Each person scoops milk replacer differently, resulting in a varying diet for the calf from day to day.  Is the scoop heaped?  Is it level?  Is your thumb in the cup?  Milk replacer bags at the bottom of the pallet are about 20% more dense than bags from the top of the pallet, so scoops from each bag deliver a different amount of nutrition to the calf and alter the milk solids.  Scoops in bags present a challenge to autofeeders as they can go through the machine and destroy parts.  It is time to put guessing with scoops in the past, and look forward to accuracy, improved calf nutrition, and better gut health for your calves!

How will you be able to continue mixing milk with ease? Our calf and heifer nutritionist specialist, Rebekah, has made an easy feeding sheet detailing milk replacer and water amounts that can be paired with a simple digital scale.  The sheet can be detailed to your feeding program!  She is also able to help you “calibrate” your scoops or weighing scale, and can measure out milk pails for more exact feeding. If we are able to weigh several ingredients for a cow TMR, weighing out the two ingredients for milk replacer will be simple!

If you feed a larger amount of calves, and want to reduce and simplify mixing time, we have a bulk mixer agreement available for portable mixers and stand alone mixers (15, 32, 50, 80, 120, 250, & 300 gallon sizes).  The agreement greatly reduces the overall cost to the producer and ultimately reduces mixing and cleaning time, and can increase mixing consistency.

Ready to set up your scale?  Rebekah has a recommendation for where to find a simple hanging digital scale that should perform well in cold weather and has an accurate reading up to 100 pounds.

For more information, please contact our calf and heifer nutrition specialist, Rebekah Mathews, at (612) 237 0714, or RebekahM@agpartners.net