Interview with Michelle Waterman- United Kingdom
Beef on dairy crosses have become very popular not only here in the United States, but also in other countries as well. In today’s article Michelle Waterman shares what it is like raising beef on dairy crosses on her farm in the United Kingdom.
A Little About Michelle
Michelle went to school and received an Agriculture Degree. Upon graduation she then went on to work for a big food retailer, Tesco, as their Agriculture manager. Later she spent 2 years running a beef operation in South America. Then she served as Ag director for 2 Sisters Food Group and ran their beef and poultry divisions. During this time, she learned how important integration is, and decided that someday she wanted to set up an integrated beef business.
Integrated Beef Business
Michelle’s operation is unique in the fact that it is fully integrated, with a direct contract from the end customer.
She raises Angus-Holstein cross calves, sourced directly from local dairy farms from 3 weeks up age, through to finishing, and supplies them on contract to a retailer.
In sourcing the calves, she works with the dairy farms to determine a fixed fair price for each year.
Michelle stated,” We pay a good price, and we expect a good calf. We stipulate genetics, early life protocols, vaccinations, and we have a minimum weight we will accept.”
Most Important Aspect of Calf Rearing
Michelle believes that the most important part of calf rearing is nutrition. She noted that if she was just a calf rearer it would be difficult for her to invest as much as she does in early life nutrition, but since she is taking the cattle to finish it makes sense that she invests so much into nutrition and health protocols.
The calves arrive at her farm at about 3 weeks of age. To aid with training to the autofeeders, the first 7 days they are on her farm they are allowed ad libitum milk. For the next 15 days calves are allowed 8 L.of milk and then are gradually stepped down in amount over 28 days until weaning. Milk powder offered in the feeders is a 23% protein and 21% fat blend, high skim powder.
18% Protein starter pellets and straw, are available to the calf the entire time. At 7-8 weeks of age calves are transitioned to a 17% protein pellet fed alongside chopped and long straw.
Biggest Health Challenges
Cattle are sourced from 12 different farms. Although calves come with good immunity from their home farm and we keep them in separate pens, they still share the same air space as calves from other farms.
About 5-7 days after arrival, they often suffer health challenges. Vaccination with an intranasal vaccine, done on the source farm, helps.
Michelle attended a seminar where she learned that it takes around 1 kilo of milk just to mount an immune response. Since then, she decided to give the calves more milk powder and the result has been more robust calves.
Michelle also attributes the health of her animals to the fact that she works really hard to communicate with the home farms. She maintains an interactive relationship with them and gives them reports back on how their calves are doing. They work together to make sure they have the right vaccination programs in place to help improve calf wellness.
Calf Housing
The baby calves are in a heated and insulated building. Forced ventilation is used in the winter and doors are left open in the summer. The older weaned animals are not in heated buildings and are more susceptible to temperature change and seasonal pneumonia.
Growth Goals
Average total intake weight of calves is 55 kg. In the milk sheds calves are gaining about 0.85-1 kg (1.87-2.2 lbs.) per day as an average over their first 7.5 weeks on the unit. In the weaned sheds, they grow at around 1.2-1.4 kg/ day (2.86-3 lbs.) per day, as an average over that 7.5 week period. She notes that health challenges can reduce those gains quite easily.
Thank you for sharing all about your operation with us Michelle! Keep up the great work with your fantastic calf rearing program!
Written by: Mariah Gull, M.S.