Dr Enoch Bergman, Swans Veterinary Services
ASHEEP & BEEF's Optimising Age of Weaning Cattle project, a Meat & Livestock Australia Producer Demonstration Site (PDS), is designed to highlight the benefits of early weaning upon feed utilisation, carrying capacity, and ultimately kgs per hectare. The concept is that by removing calves earlier from their mothers that less feed is required to address the nutritional requirements of the cow and the calf individually.
The methodology of the PDS is to remove half of the calves from a population of young cows with calves up to a couple of months ahead of a producer’s individual preferred weaning date, to then measure the weight gain of the weaned calves and attempt to compare the expected weight gain reduction to the weight gain and body condition improvement of the dams of the weaned calves.
Images: Left to right, earlier weaned calves in 2024 at Epasco (Nick Ruddenklau), Carnigup (Ryan Willing), Chilwell (Simon Fowler & Steve Bingham).
Exacerbated by the two last seasons with early finishes and declining feed quality, most producers involved have found the rate of gain reduction in their calves to be too pronounced and whilst the mothers of the weaned calves have enjoyed significant improvement in weight and body condition the design of the trial makes it difficult to extract the value of the potential feed savings the process could create should the entire mob of calves had been weaned. Due to the trial design, the mothers of the remaining calves, plus the mothers of the weaned calves are still requiring traditional management to maintain the cows’ condition during the process.
Further, weaned calves require more crude protein or other nitrogen sources to be able to effectively continue to convert forage into sufficient energy to keep up with their siblings still “hitting the milk bar” for cheap energy (cheap to them, but very expensive to their mothers).
Regardless, whilst the results of the PDS have been disappointing in some ways, all producers involved have a better understanding of the benefits to the cow of weaning her calf, of the nutritional requirements of young calves, and the opportunities in poor seasons to wean early when required.
It was abundantly clear that producers who typically sell their calves straight off their mothers or very shortly thereafter, as opposed to retaining them to finish, were the most financially disadvantaged within the trial (noting that with these producers, the earlier weaned calves were retained until the remaining calves were weaned and they were then sold together as a group). Those who retained both groups of calves to grow out post weaning had more opportunity for the earlier weaned calves to catch up. We are hoping to gather some data from some calves which were early weaned in the first year of the project as they progress forwards to their final destination as grass finished calves and will be keen to share that data with you.
