Located 10 minutes from Tirau in the Waikato region, the Bensons rear a total of 150 calves made up of 95 replacement dairy heifers and 55 beef cattle, with another 100 sold as youngsters. Having the right facilities for these calves to prepare them for their future value makes all the difference for this system.
In the 2020/2021 season new purposebuilt facilities for rearing calves were constructed on the farm. The old facilities were no longer fit for purpose so this gave Amanda and Dean scope to make the calf shed best fit their rearing technique.
Not limited to keeping within existing infrastructure meant the Bensons could follow best practice guidelines for their shed construction. Using these guidelines, plus their experiences with 11 years of calf raising on various farms, they came up with a design to work for them.
Their key objectives were to reduce physical effort, decrease biosecurity risk, make life transitions easier for the calves thereby enhancing their wellbeing, and improve the overall calf feeding operation.
"Having a well-designed facility means the physical work is easier to do which gives us more energy to really focus on maximising the wellbeing of each and every calf," they say.
Key components of the design include:
- Easy access internal walkways
Having easy access to all the pens without having to move through them means less risk of contamination between pens, plus the walkway allows for easy calf movement. To help with recording, there is a whiteboard stuck to the wall at every pen to record relevant information about the calves, such as any illness or important information on feeding. - Location and orientation of the shed
Close enough to the dairy so calf rearers are not isolated, and oriented to make the most of sunshine and minimise exposure to prevailing weather with a roof canopy to keep out more rain and constructed to restrict bird access. - Reticulated fresh water to all pens
Fresh water must be provided to calves and this system means it's always available. - Milk pump lines to each pen
This is a huge savings on physical effort and takes away the manual transport of heavy buckets of milk. This is an effective way to reduce time in the shed transporting milk to pens. - Sliding curtain doors
This idea arose from the sliding curtain sides on large trucks. This inventive design enables the calves to be sheltered from rain and wind when needed, while also allowing the curtains to open to provide sunshine to the pens. The curtains help to shield the calves from cold drafts and cool nighttime temperatures. - Quality lighting
It's not always possible to be feeding calves when the sun is out, so having quality lighting means that everyone can see what they are doing in the shed.
The Benson's shed won the recent Farm Source Calf Week 'Grand Designs' competition, with judge Michael Shallcrass (Fonterra's Senior Veterinary Manager) also highlighting a range of great additions for calf sheds among the other entries.
These include:
- Plumbed hot water system
For ease of cleaning equipment and ensuring great hygiene and less bugs, having a hot water system at the calf shed for clean-up is a great idea. - Pen orientation
Getting sunlight into sheds is great way to kill bugs and provide warmth for growing calves. North facing sheds are ideal so calves can be protected from most adverse weather. - Spring hinged gates
There gates are easy to push open and automatically close so hands are free to carry any equipment. - Solid wall partitions
Solid partitions eliminate nose to nose contact and cross pen contamination to reduce the risk of spreading bugs.
All these features could be added to an existing operation to improve efficiency and management practices in the shed.
For best practice guidelines on calf housing, visit the DairyNZ website.