Calves with Sam

Cost of Rearing Heifers in UK

I recently received this reminder of the availability of this report on cost of heifer rearing in UK. It is well done and most informative. 

Hello

If you missed DairyCo’s webinar on Wednesday night, it can be viewed on youtube:

DairyCo YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/7HySAiUPI8A

Your levy money has funded a comprehensive study into the cost of calf rearing in GB in 102 herds across all year round calving, split block calving, spring calving and autumn calving patterns.

Among the headlines:

·         Average age at first calving was 25.8 months

·         Calving at 24 months reduces rearing costs by 16%

·         Increasing the proportion of grazed grass in the diet reduced rearing costs

·         It takes on average 1.5 lactations to pay back rearing costs

·         But, the range in payback is from 168 days to 2000+ days!

DairyCo resources on calf management can be found on the DairyCo website
www.dairyco.ahdb.org.uk/calves

If you only want to see the part on repayment period you can click at 17:45 on the recording and you can get just that part. I also noted that the non-completion rate for the 102 herds in this study was 22.4% (birth to calving loss rate).