Roger Russell was a firm believer that whey milk replacer was an inferior product, and he wasn’t prepared to feed it to his calves – until he experienced first-hand the significant difference in the condition of his calves within days of switching to Sprayfo Blue calf milk replacer.
Roger owns a bull farm at Ruawaro, Huntly. He rears about 100 calves in Autumn to be service bulls and then another 220 calves in Spring as replacements. He sources Friesian and Jersey calves from local dairy farms.
“We are selective about where we buy calves from, looking for farmers who place importance on the first 12 hours of life, have good clean sheds and run reasonably disease-free operations” says Russell.
His rearing shed is a tunnel shed with good outdoor access. The calves come in at 4 days and are fed colostrum milk fortified with milk powder – a 50/50 mix. The Friesians are weaned off milk at about 60kg and eating a kg of meal a day. The Jerseys are weaned at 55kgs.
Weaning is staged, initially they are taken off milk and fed adlib meal for 10 days. For the following 4 weeks, meal is reduced as they transition to pasture. Once on pasture only, the animals are 100-120kg.
This last autumn, Roger found his calves were struggling to gain weight, condition was poor, and he needed a solution to turn them around. The calves were about 3 weeks old at the time.
“We were feeding a cheap milk replacer, and not seeing good results” he explains. “My neighbour Simon Corkill is a large-scale calf rearer so I asked him for advice. He advised us to use a high-quality milk powder and referred me to AgriVantage.
“(AgriVantage’s North Island Business Manager) Jaco was excellent to deal with. We were pleased that he took the time to learn about our system and the challenges that we faced before advising us on what to use.
“We spoke about nutrition being the first block of animal health, the importance of digestibility – in other words what you put in is what you get out – and therefore the need to invest in a calf early on if you’re going to grow good animals. It all made a lot of sense.”
On Jaco’s advice, Russell switched the calves immediately to Sprayfo Blue whey-based milk replacer. He also added a dose of Biopect for the first few days. Pectin-based, Biopect binds the gut and helps young stomachs to adapt to change.
“Despite my concerns about whey, I have to admit that this combination turned my calves around within a matter of days” says Russell. “Condition changed significantly and quickly.
“The Jerseys were a bit fussy on the change but within a week they were putting on condition. Two weeks later they looked good – and Jerseys are typically hard to put condition on.
“Based on this experience, everyone in my team has a considerably more positive view of whey-based milk replacer and we can tell you that Sprayfo is a quality product with quite a bit of technology behind it.”
Choose Sprayfo milk replacers for optimising calf growth
AgriVantage offers a choice of curding or whey Sprayfo calf milk replacers, each one offering different benefits for calf and growth development.
Sprayfo Blue Premium Calf Milk Replacer
