Urban is the number one supplier of feeding systems in Europe for calves, kids and lambs.
The Calf Rearing Urban feeder from PPP Industries can simplify the daily workload and provide exact amounts of milk to each calf in several portions.
The Urban feeder has the ability to feed colostrum and whole milk as well as calf milk replacer. Warm milk of a consistent temperature is delivered to each calf in small portions throughout the day. This ensures that there is no overflow of milk from the abomasum to the rumen so that all of the milk is digested efficiently.
The system will also give alerts for calf illness and has automated daily cleaning. The whole system is designed for maximising growth rates.
“We predict that in the coming years producers will begin feeding dairy calves more milk than they are now commonly fed, increasingly using labour-saving milk delivery systems that facilitate more natural milk drinking behaviour,” Professor Marina von Keyserlingk and Professor Daniel Weary of British Columbia University’s animal welfare programme say.
On many dairy farms calves were separated from their mothers within 24 hours of birth then fed milk by bucket or bottle until four to 12 weeks. But Keyserlingk and Weary found calves separated at 14 days gained 16.5kg over that period compared with 4.5kg for those separated early. And the late separation calves maintained that advantage.
Numerous studies now show that if calves grow faster in the first few weeks of their lives they produce more milk as heifers.
The correct development of the mammary gland is occurring at this very young age.
“It is commonly thought that feeding less milk will encourage solid feed intake. Indeed, we have found that over the first five weeks of life, feeding calves less milk does increase starter consumption, (0.17kg versus 0.09kg a day) but this practice also severely limits weight gains.”
An alternate approach to continuous access is to provide unlimited availability of milk but only for a few hours each day.
Increasing the daily milk allowance for calves from five to eight litres a day reduced by half the number of times calves visited the feeder, reducing occupancy time and displacements from the feeder and improving the efficient use of the equipment.
With the Urban automatic calf feeder a young calf is restricted to around 1.2 litres a visit to the machine because if it drinks more than this at a time the abomasum is full and the excess milk is stored in the rumen. Milk stored in the rumen is poorly digested. As the calf gets older the portion of milk it is allowed at each station visit is increased so that by four weeks of age it can be around 2.5 litres. This system matches what happens in nature when calves suckle off cows.
On the Urban automatic calf feeder they can still get eight litres a day but they need to go back a number of times to achieve this.
The Urban U40 automated calf feeder is compact, frost resistant and made of stainless steel. Each feeder can supply up to four feed stations. One computer-controlled system can control 500 calves with multiple feeders based on 25 calves a feeder.
For more information visit www.pppindustries.co.nz.
