Spring a good time to look at design for labour-friendly calf sheds

It might seem like a strange time of year to be talking about calf shed design, given the majority of calves are half reared but the reality is many farmers are now planning calf shed projects for the coming summer and autumn.

With a high milk price and calf price, the expectation is that capital expenditure on dairy farms will be up in 2025. Having sufficient calf housing is non-negotiable from an animal welfare and farm efficiency point of view. Plus, with the risk of TB now much greater than it was, many farmers are faced with having to hold on to all calves born on the farm.

Many farmers ask about the best design for a calf shed.

Now, I’m not an expert on calf health or building design but I have been into a lot of calf sheds and I can safely say that I’m unimpressed with many of the common designs.

This is particularly the case where automatic calf feeders are being used.

Having an automatic calf feeder is a fundamental shift in how the calves are going to be fed compared to manual multi-teat feeding.

I see most new calf sheds with auto feeders are built with four or five pens. The question should be asked what is the purpose of these pens, other than adding cost and work?

I don’t buy the argument that multiple pens reduce disease as calves are sharing the one airspace and can lick each other through the gates anyway.

One of the key pinch-points in terms of workload when using auto-feeders is training calves to the machine.

It’s not so much training calves to get used to the machine, it’s more so letting every calf get its first feed on the machine.

I hear some farmers say that it takes one hour to get 16 calves to have their first full feed, and this is when calves are hungry and want to drink.

I’m conscious that different automatic calf feeders have different ways of working, but where four stations can be used at the one time, I think it makes more sense to put these four stations alongside each other and only have two pens in the shed.

One pen should be the training pen and should be big enough to take 30 or 40 calves (depending on what each station is capable of feeding and how many calves will be on the farm).

The operator may still be required to select which station a new calf is going onto, but once that is done as soon as one calf is finished its feed, then another calf can be put into the station.

The other pen should be an extra-large pen capable of taking all of the calves on the other stations.

So, if the feeder has four stations, then the pen for the other three stations should be big enough to take 90 to 120 calves, depending on requirements.

The gates dividing the two pens should be arranged so that the farmer has the option to have all four feed stations available to the calves in the training pen and the calves in the big pen are locked away from the feeders.

This will mean that when calves are being trained to the feeder for the first time, all four feed stations can be used. Again, it depends on what system is being used but where calf tags can be picked up by the machine automatically and where four stations can work at the same time it will reduce the time spent training calves to the first feed four-fold.

The operator may still be required to select which station a new calf is going onto, but once that is done as soon as one calf is finished its feed, then another calf can be put into the station.

As calves are fed they should be marked with spray or a crayon so as to know that those calves have already drunk their allowance.

Training pen

As soon as all of the new calves have had their first feed from the stations, the gates can be readjusted to have just one station in the training pen and the rest of the stations available for the big pen.

Typically, it takes three or four days for all calves in a new group to get fully trained on to the feeder.

When calves are fully trained, they can be moved into the big pen. At this stage the calf will have access to two or three feed stations and can decide for themselves which station.

In my view, there is no downside to having calves in big pens instead of small pens.

The advantages are that calves can be trained faster and the shed is easier to clean out with fewer pens.

All in-one shed

Another design consideration when planning a calf shed, particularly on larger farms where there will be lots of calves born at the one time, is the idea of an all-in-one shed.

Essentially, rather than moving calves from pen to pen when they get bigger, in this instance the pens gets bigger.

This obviously requires larger sheds for it to work, but the thinking is that small temporary penning such as sheep hurdles or crowd control barriers are used to create a small pen for up to 10 new- born calves.

The calves are kept in this pen for however long is necessary until they are all sucking strongly, usually four to five days or so.

At this point the barriers or hurdles are taken away and maybe two or three pens of 10 calves are joined together in the one pen.

This pen may contain 30 or 40 calves and these are fed using large teat feeders or trailed teat feeders or, indeed, automatic calf feeders.

This type of approach is very labour efficient for large farms that have lots of calves being born per day. It may not be as efficient on small and medium-sized herds.

In brief