Investment in calf housing for a dairy-Wagyu future
With a ship-shape farm in Cumbria, the Mann family have always kept high standards and achieved good performance across their dairy herd. Now that they’ve committed to Wagyu crossing, their new calf housing is similarly slick.
Every practice and process on John Mann’s Cumbrian farm is hallmarked by quality. From the composition of his herd’s milk at 4.90% fat and 3.75% protein across 10,354 litres (2x), to the quality of multi-cut silage, consistently harvested at dry matters of 35-40% and metabolisable energies of 11-12MJ/kg, quality shines through whatever way you look at it. So when the switch was made to raising Wagyu calves, it was no surprise that meticulous attention was paid to the calf housing and rearing system.
Farming with his wife, Dot, at Crooklands Farm on the Solway Plain near Wigton, the 460 Holsteins had formerly been bred to British Blue and sexed dairy semen, but could occasionally experience calving difficulties with some of the beef-cross calves. “Introducing the Wagyu completely overcame this problem,” says John, who accepted a contract with Warrendale in 2020 and now serves over 55 per cent of the herd to the breed. Only 13 pure Holstein calves are born each month in the year-round calving herd, with each one genomically tested to identify the best dairy replacements.
“Since we switched breeds, the calving ease issue has completely disappeared,” he says. “We have hardly used the calving jack and have even had two Wagyu breach calves recently which were born without assistance. Everything about the breed is positive. The easy calvings cause very little stress on the cows and they in turn have less milk fever, fewer DAs or other transition issues and produce more milk.” So impressed is he with the breed that even his sweeper bull is now a Wagyu, in place of a native breed.
The switch has also played neatly into milk buyer Arla’s policy that ‘every calf has a value’, with a guaranteed market for all cross-bred youngstock. “Every animal is valuable and since we started, Warrendale have never put the price down – only ever tweaked it up a little,” he says.
With confidence in the assured market, the family decided to invest in a new calf unit to get the process right, upgrading the system to optimise animal health, welfare and performance as well as staff working conditions. In collaboration with consultant Matt Davies from Custom Dairy Air, a building of 80m x 13m was erected, in which ventilation was a priority.
Construction features include traditional Yorkshire boarding (two offset timber layers) up to the eaves, solid metal gable ends, automatic roller doors for staff access and a cement-fibre 22-degree pitched roof with an inner metal skin to prevent condensation. The design is centred around a 6m x 6m kitchen, flanked by 16 pens, each measuring 10m x 4.5m. “Our main objective is to have no pneumonia and the whole building was planned with that as a priority,” says John.
As well as positive pressure ventilation (PPV) from a FabricAir ducting system which provides a change of air every minute, other features include isolation from the rest of the farm, the option to close off one eight-bay end of the shed for cleaning or disease control, and sloped slot drains under the bedding area which help keep the floor dry and bedding free from ammonia.
Calf vaccination supports the drive for good health, including for bovine respiratory disease – a task carried out by vet-techs, who also undertake disbudding and weighing. Cows are also vaccinated in pregnancy to help protect calves via colostrum from diarrhoea caused by rotavirus and E. coli.
Housed individually at the outset and fed colostrum for three days before moving on to milk powder, all calves remain bottle fed for their 11 weeks on milk. Temporary individual penning is removed at three weeks and the nine calves in each pen then go on to be fed, still by bottle, through self-locking yokes.
“Bottle feeding ensures every single calf gets enough milk and it helps avoid cross-contamination,” says Dot, also remarking that the extra saliva stimulated by teat drinking aids digestion.
Solid feed throughout both pre- and post-weaning comprises an 18% protein nut, with access to straw, with youngstock staying on this diet until they leave the farm for a rearing unit at around six months. Target growth rates for this period are 0.9kg/day, although John says they have not quite hit this goal. “I think it is feasible but we are still fine-tuning the system,” he says. “We have just changed milk powder to one containing mainly dairy, more natural ingredients and we may move to three-times-a-day bottle feeding.”
Also keeping back a few Wagyu crosses to finish on the farm, these move on to a similar TMR to the milking herd’s. This includes grass silage preserved with Kelvin Cave’s top-of-the-range additive, Safesil Pro, crimped wheat or barley, also grown on farm and preserved with CrimpSafe 300, with soya hulls and rape.
Emphasising the importance of quality feed for every class of stock, John says: “If you can get your base energy up with forages, it’s so much cheaper, the livestock do better, and it adds to their condition and performance.” In the final analysis, he admits the investment has been hefty but getting both the breed and the calf rearing right is giving the farm the certainty it needs.
Praising the breed for its ease of management at every stage, he says: “The Wagyu calves take to the bottle better than the black and whites and they have good temperaments all the way through. You can walk into a pen of fully grown animals and you would not be worried at all. We’re very happy we made the investment as getting our calves off to a good start is the future of the business.”
This article was first published in the British Wagyu Association magazine.
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