Thank you, Stacey, and thank you, Wender there as well for a fantastic first webinar. I think I can follow on some of the themes, certainly along the lines of prevention rather than cure. This webinar won't be mentioning medicines at all, but something that's very close to my heart as a vet, is getting involved in building, correctly for the cow, in order to reduce the unnecessary use of medicines, but also for the cow's welfare.
Let's just have a look at what we're gonna cover in the next 45 minutes or so. So I want to just talk. To start off with the role of the vet in building for the cow, some general principles.
Leading on from that, looking at cow sizes and the issue of space and cubicles, some tips for cubicle design, cubicle building cubicle design often crops up as questions for me, from vets in practise, and looking at simple modifications that can be made. Then we're gonna look at young stocks and just key bits about young stock housing, special environmental requirements, ventilation, and so on. And then finally, in this whistle stop tour, a, a, a look at some transition and calving cow accommodation and again their additional needs.
Lots of photographs, lots of examples. So starting with the, the basic principle. My mantra is the cow always comes first.
So the good buildings will be designed to meet the needs of the cow, so the animal stays healthy and productive. But there are other considerations. There is the human aspect as well.
We need to consider having a pleasant working environment, and a layout which is conducive to efficient working, which is future resistant with an ability to expand, and it has to be cost effective. Now, the role of us as vets in building design. Is, I think, quite unique.
It's not, we're not the people who were, we're not, we're not, building engineers, we're not architects. So we can't get involved in the detail of that unless we've done further study. But we should be the one of the cow advocate, the person who is sometimes required in this general mix of people that get involved in, particularly builds to counter that of some of the other people, which perhaps hold the purse spring purse strings and don't always have a full appreciation of the cow's needs, while they may still have an appreciation of cost, but not how the cow's needs and cow's future production will affect the economics of the build.
So here's my first question to you guys. Approximately how much does it cost to build a new dairy shed on 1 pound per cow space? I appreciate that some of you won't be familiar with pounds, we've got an international audience, so, for pound, substitute euro or dollar, we're roughly the same.
OK, Owen, I've launched that poll question for you, and people have started voting. So I'll just give people a bit more time to consider. This question.
Have a guess if you don't know. We can't see which way people vote. We can only see the percentages, so.
Yeah, have a go. Get involved. OK, so I'll just give people a little bit more time.
And I'll end the whole question now, share the results. So we have 13% of attendees saying 500 pounds. The most popular answer is 63% is 1500 pounds, then 19% said 3000 pounds and 6% and 8000 pounds.
OK, and the most popular answer is correct. So it's roughly 1500 pounds. There's a big variation depending on what's included in there.
Are we including slurry storage. The cheapest could probably done for just under 1000 pounds. We're just looking at no slurry storage, just putting a shed up and, kitting it out with some cubicles.
But if we can go up to, 2, 2500 pounds if we're including underground slurry storage in the slattered system, for example, which tends to be more expensive. . But yeah, how does that pay back then in terms of of that investment?
Well. In my view, the payback is, in two ways, extra milk production and fewer health problems for all, but probably and is a better, is a better word there. And in actual fact, when you do the sums, it doesn't take many years to pay back very often that investment in building.
And er times are hard, times are always hard for dairy farmers, dairy farmers always complain they don't have enough money, they don't have enough time. That's true for a lot of us. But those farmers that stay still, they, they don't invest in their buildings, they don't invest in upgrades, then they tend to find that they just become less and less efficient on milk production, and they just won't be able to play the game.
In the future, and we all know which farms those are the ones that haven't invested in their, in their facilities. And when you consider the average sick cow takes, about the same amount of time and labour as 40 healthy cows, that's a fairly strong, economic argument for investing in good buildings. So looking at what cows want, I'm going to introduce a cow signals principle now.
This is the cow signals approach, to, building design where, we sort of look at a picture like this of cows outside, in, in, in a nice environment. And what do they get? What are the six freedoms of pasture, in other words, in the cow, cow signal's parlance.
Those 6. Cow signals, diamonds, the six freedoms of the basic needs include access to feed 24 hours a day, which is highly, high quality and highly palatable. Similarly to water, light, ideally 16 hours of daylight, which is, .
Usually, specified as more than 200 lux. And then 8 hours of night light, so below 50 lus. And that is the best balance for driving high dry matter intakes, feed intakes, whilst not upsetting the fertility, hormones and, and, and still getting good fertility in the cows.
The dark period is quite important for that. Air. And the access to air is not just about getting oxygen.
Of course, that's important to get oxygen, but you need a pretty poor shed if cows are not getting oxygen. The air is important for a cow, to regulate her temperature. a milking cow, her, problem is usually keeping cool, not keeping warm.
And, it is by ventilator, respiration and respiratory heat loss through evaporation, which is her main. Means of, of, of losing that heat and regulating her temperature. And that's why fresh air is so important.
Rest. Ideally, a cow will lie down for 12 to 14 hours a day. And that is best for her, not only her feet and her foot health, but also for her milk production.
And then finally, space, and space is so important for lots of reasons. And I'm gonna just concentrate a little bit on space in the next few slides. And all of that, all of that will lead to good health.
And like I say, tying into Wendola's presentation, less need for treatment medicines. And yet when we put cows in a shed. Then we run the risk of potentially 6 handicaps by restricting those 6 things, restricting the space compared to what you would have outside, restricting access to feed and water by barriers, restricting lying tis by potentially putting in.
Cubicle divisions and, and less comfortable beds, restricted light because we've got a roof, restricted fresh air because we've got a roof and walls. So those are the handicaps we've got to try and work with. And there's two examples of, of perhaps typical sheds that you might find dairy cows in in the winter in the UK, certainly both of those could have improvements made to them.
Let's look at building for a system. So when I look at what a farm needs in terms of its building requirements, I sort of try and break it down in a similar way to what I've done here. So if we have 100 cows on an all year round calving system, all year round calving, and a relatively equal number of milking cows at any one time, that 100 cow farm would have 89 milking cows, 11 dry cows, 2 sick cows on average, 4 fresh cows, i.e., in the first two weeks of calving.
That's based on an 8 week dry period and a 400 day calving interval. And each week, there'll be 2 carvings, 1.5 cows to dry off, half a new heifer to introduce 4 examinations and 4 hoof checks.
That's if we have a, a, a, a hoof check a lactation and want to dry off. But that doesn't include lame cow treatments. And we'll also have 3 to 6 fertility examinations, PDs.
And all that has to be considered. And once you consider those numbers, and we can start to think, OK, well, how much dry cow accommodation do we need? How many carving boxes do we need?
How, what can we do for the fresh cows because we're gonna have at any one time this number of fresh cows, perhaps a couple of sick cows. That's our good starting point. But I always remember, never, sorry I missed one off for one masti case as well.
Never to build for the average. So even though we've got on average 11 dry cows, if we build a farm for this 100 cow unit, taking into consideration 11 dry cows, then over then. That dry cow shed will be overstocked for 50% of the time.
And there's a rule of thumb for all year round calving systems to build in a fudge factor of about 30 to 40%, for, for example, dry cow accommodation and fresh cow accommodation. So you build for maybe 130% or 140% of the average to account for the fluctuations, the seasonal fluctuations in the numbers of animals that are likely to be in that shed. Looking at 5 things that cows particularly dislike in buildings and again there's some examples here in the photographs, but they hate stepping down, so.
You'll see cows in cubicles that have a high curb, and, it can be a reason, so, so cubicles with a high curb. You'll see them wanting to back out of the cubicle, and they'll be doing what's called an intention movement where their back foot will, will drop down as if it's going to go to the floor, but then it will come back up to the cubicle base again. And she'll do that several times before actually plucking up courage to put that foot into the, in her mind, perhaps the abyss, which exists at the back of that cubicle.
There seems to be sort of a, a critical depth of about 8 inches that she's prepared to drop down, but higher than that, and you may get a rejection of cubicles, and this photograph on the left shows a cubicle, sorry, a heifer lying in the passageway rather than choosing the cubicle, and that may well be because of the high curb. Cows don't like backing up, they don't like tight turns, they don't like projections sticking out, they don't like, . tight areas.
So the bottom right picture shows a crossover passage with a water trough. It's only enough room there for two cows to pass each other barely, and certainly not enough room for a cow to drink in peace. And they don't like slippery floors as well.
So just a few examples of, of, of things to look out for when you're round about the sheds and then think, what can you do about that to improve it for the cows, from the cow's perspective. I said I'd mention space in a bit more detail. It's always good to think in cow sizes, so if we just look at the feed passage there at the front.
How wide should that be? Well, it should be at least wide enough for two cows to pass each other comfortably, whilst a cow can be eating without disturbance at the food fence. So how wide is that got to be?
Well, let's look at what length of the Holstein cow is. They're 2.5 metres long and they're about just under 1 metre wide.
So that feed passage would have to be at least 2.5 metres for the length of the cow, plus 2 metres for two cows to pass each other. So.
That would be an absolute minimum of 3.5 metres. But in actual fact, I would choose 5 metres for, a feed passage dimension in a modern new build for Holstein's.
Then when cows lie down, how much space do they need again? Well, they're 2.5 metres long from nose to tail and their actual.
Part of the body that's in the surface of the ground is 1. 1.8 metres long.
So that gives you some dimensions. And then when they lie down, they're 1.3 metres wide.
So the dimensions of the cubicles really come from there. And if we get it wrong, then this is the kind of thing you might see. We might see that cows are not lying straight in their cubicles, and then that leads to injuries.
And injuries on cows shown here, is, is where the cubicle division is rubbing on the back and they get a spine injury. But injuries can occur on the ribs, on the, hook bone. Or just on the flanks, lots of different areas.
The Americans have a term for this. They call it indexing, whether or not cows are lying straight. And there's lots of different reasons why cows might not lie straight.
Here's some, examples here. You might be because of the cubicle, the actual lying bit is, is, is short, or it may be, as in the top left picture, there is head to head conflicts, so cows choose to lie diagonally rather than be in each other's faces on their head to head cubicles. It may be because the rear curve is uncomfortable and that's pushing cows forwards.
There may be no brisket locator to higher brisket locator, or bob space obstructions. The bob space will like look at with some different pictures of cubicles. That's the area immediately in front of the cow's nose, which she bobs into when she stands up.
Again, concentrating on space. Whenever you go into a shed, just think, is this a 2 row design or a 3 row design? 2 row design.
Briefly, is where there are two banks of cubicles, to one length of feed barrier. Through road design, 3 banks of cubicles to 1 length speed barrier. So those two pictures, diagrams I've shown on the screen here, they're both stocked at 100%, i.e.
1 cow per 1 cubicle. The picture on the left has got 32 cubicles, 32 cows. The picture on the right, 60 cubicles, 60 cows.
The picture on the right is a 3 row design, and you can see immediately that that tends to increase the, the density of cows in the passageways. But not only that, but you have other consequences of, of, of, of this. So look at the cow that I've circled in blue here.
What's she wanting to do? She's probably wanting to go and drink or to go to the feed barrier. But to do that, she has to get past these 3 cows here.
And depending on her social dominance, that will govern whether or not she's likely to do it or not. So what you tend to do when you restrict space. You reduce choice for cows.
And when you reduce choice, you get more what's called waiting cows. And a waiting cow is a cow that is either not standing at the feed barrier and eating, or in a cubicle lying down. Everything else is a waiting cow.
And when you restrict space, you restrict choice. You therefore get more waiting cows. Waiting cows.
Many of them are loitering in the passageways and then you're in a vicious circle because you've got a lot of cows in occupying the passageways, then you increasingly decrease choice for other cows because you create conflict within the passageways. And therefore, it's a vicious circle because the cubicle shed becomes increasingly crowded. If all the cows were either at the feed barrier, eating or lying down in a cubicle, and the passageways would be virtually empty, and that's the ideal.
So cows have got lots of choice to do what they want to do. Show you some examples. So this is a 3 row design as it happens, but it has wide passageways.
It's got a very wide space at the front of the picture frame here, which is just in front of the robots which are below the camera. It's a 132 jerseys in this, shed stocked at 100%. It's a 3 row design.
And the total space because of the wide passageways and the wide crossovers actually works out to be just under 10 metres squared per cow. That's my magic number, for, dairy herds for the minimum ideal amount of space in a shed. So remember that and, and, and, and use it, work it out for some of the farms that you visit on a regular basis.
The feed space actually works out to be 0.6 metres per cow in this in this example because it's a three row design. So that would be the limiting factor.
Jerseys, perhaps that's OK. I wouldn't want to be quite as low as that for Holstein's in feed space where I'd be looking at 65 centimetres minimum. Contrast with this picture, it's actually a two row design.
It's 160 Hostes, 160 cubicles. But the floor space or the overall space, including the cubicle bed, I might point out, is actually 7.6 metres square per cow.
So much reduced, and then you tend to get a more crowded environment, more crowded passageways, more waiting cows, more conflict. And yet the feed space is greater than that previous picture. But the devil's in the detail.
Look at the design of the feed barrier, and then the, the, and then what effect that's having. So there's a lot of cows here with rubs on their necks because the feed barrier is perhaps a little bit low, it's not moved forward. And so you get cows altering their behaviour, and they will, they will stand a diagonal to the feed barrier in order to get a greater reach.
And then that increases, or sorry, decreases the effective space per cow. So on paper, it looks great, 0.7 cents, 0.7 metres per cow feed space.
But the way the cows are behaving and a lot of them standing diagonally at the feed fence, actually, it means that some of those shire feeders, lower hierarchy cows won't have access to feed, so they can't feed all at the same time. Let's look at some simple adaptations to create extra space. So this is my favourite, is take cows out.
And if you take the cows out, that then gives you the opportunity to remove some spare cubicles. I was trying to encourage farmers to think of terms of sort of how much milk can you get out of that shed, not how much, how many cows can you fit in that shed. And I've been proven right so many times by removing cows, that the milk yield actually goes up for that shed, because the remaining cows can perform so much better.
And then there's a lot of less easily quantifiable positive effects as well. Probably less lameness, probably less bullying, bullying, probably more, better eastre expression. Another option is to create outside loafing area, why not do wall?
And another option is to create outside feeding area. So I think I have a picture there. So this is a farm, an example of a farm who, had a 3 row design, restricted feed space.
He had a, a collection yard, which he was able to allow cows access to, and then built himself a outside feeding trough that was covered. And that massively improved the, conditions for the cows and, and, and the feed intake and the milk yield. Just looking at some principles of cubicle design, I have 6 principles or 6 areas of cubicle design that I like to look at.
The first is the lying surface and that's probably the, well it will be the most important in my, in my view. It must be soft, it must be grippy. So deep beds, score well in my view, that could be deep straw, although that's a risk for mastitis or deep sand.
Mattresses are always a challenge or mats or mattresses always a challenge, but they can be improved by adding, more sawdust to create a, a, a, a, a better environment. They're a challenged partly because they tend to be not as grippy, and that means that cows don't get up and down in such a smooth way, and they can bang themselves on the cubicle divisions are more likely to bang themselves on the cubicle divisions. Next thing, look at bed length.
So it must allow straight line without overhanging the curb. If you remember, a Holstein is 1.8 metres long from the front of where her brisket touches the ground to the rear of her, of where her udder touches the ground.
And so that's the bed length. That's the distance from the curb to the brisket locator. A little bit of muck on the back of the beds is probably acceptable in 10% of cases.
Look at this case here, the one I've put up on the right hand side of the screen. There is gonna be no muck on the back of those beds, but that's not good for the cows. That's purely because those beds are far, far too short.
Third thing to look at is looking for an unobtrusive neck rail. So this must allow a cow to stand squarely in the stall and rise without hindrance. The neck rail is there really to position the cow and and make sure she doesn't lie too far forwards.
And they're also there in most cases, actually, as part of the, the strength of the construction of cubicles. This example here is a, is a desperately low neck rail, which is definitely causing hindrance as the cow is trying to stand up. And that will reduce lying times.
It will reduce, it'll, reduce a cow's wish to go and lie in a cubicle and when she does lie down there, it may actually increase her lying bouts, which is not a good thing either. So this Net rail is too short. Sorry, too short forwards from the curb, but it's also too low.
And, and it's often a very simple, modification that could be made to improve that. So in this picture on the right, the farmer has just built little extensions, from his old cubicles to increase the height of the neck rail, which would be effective. Fourth thing looking at is a brisket locator.
Quite a lot to be said about brisket locators. They need to be there because otherwise cows will lie too far forwards as demonstrated in this picture on the left. But you often see, or I often see brisket locators which are too high, like this picture I've put up here, and cows need to be able to step over the brisket locator very easily when they rise because they when you watch them when they get up, they'll put a front foot forward in order to push off and raise their heads.
And a high brisket locator like this one illustrated in this picture, discourages that. So ideally the brisket locator is there to position them but non-obtrusive, and the picture I've shown here shows a cow can actually lie with her legs comfortably over the brisket locator if she likes. So in other words, no more than 4 inches or 10 centimetres high off the surface of the beds.
Number 5, looking at Headspace or lunge room and the bob zone, which I mentioned earlier, that idea of the bob, the bobbing. A cow must be able to lie lie with her neck straight, and that's for comfort and also for ability to to ruminate and chew the cod. And she must have enough lounge room to get up with no obstructions in her bob zone.
So when a cow gets up, she'll put her front foot forward, she'll dip her nose, in front of her and then she'll push off with her front foot in that front. The head will come up. So walls in front of a cubicle usually restrict that from happening.
So a cow might lie diagonal or lunge diagonally into the other cubicle or end up just banging herself on the cubicle divisions, which is very common. So removing walls, as in the picture on the right, is always a good thing in my opinion. So these cows have got, got no restrictions in front of them, which shouldn't hinder them when they get up.
This one here, just watch out for these cubicle designs. So when you have cantilever cubicles like this, there is a bottom bar that runs, about, . 6 to 10 inches off the ground in front of the cow, but that restricts the bob zone and it hinders cows when they get up.
So not a good thing to have. Just looking again at that space that's in front of the cows, far better to have a design like this where there is no er bottom bar. In front of where the nose is, so it's very open at the front.
But also consider the space on the head to heads. This should be at least 5 ft. Any less than that, and you will find that cows will lie diagonally because they do not like being in each other's faces.
So modern cubicles on a curb to curb basis. So in other words, looking at head to head cubicles, looking at one curve to the other curve should be at least 17 ft 6 ft lying space, 5 ft in the middle, and then 6 ft lying space. Look at the simple modifications to create extra headspace.
Well, sometimes the cows will do it for you. They'll bang out the front walls. If the wall is very solid, you'll need to do it for them.
And here's some examples of walls that can all come out. And it can be done, and here's an example of a farmer that's done it. Doesn't matter if cow's heads er .
go into the, into the passageway in front, at least she has got, unrestricted space in front of her. And here's another example, where there was once a wall and the farmers just removed it. Can be done, just encourage them to do it.
And then finally, although the divider is the bit that often er cubicle manufacturers use as their USP cos it's the bit that that that differentiates them from each other. The shape of the divider, the, the, the design of the divider. In my opinion, it's the least important part because you get all the other dimensions right, then the dividers not important.
But it must not cause injury to the cow, and preferably the cow has no contact with the divider, whilst encouraging, nevertheless, it's lie in a straight line position. So here's some examples of different dividers. I think the key bit is not having that bottom bar so that you have an unrestricted open space at the front.
And 1.3 metres wide is my is my recommended width for Holstein cows. Get it wrong and you'll see lots and lots of injuries from the dividers.
And as I said before, they can be in all sorts of different places on the cow. That reminds me, there's some, figures there, dimensions. These are all available in the notes that accompany this, webinar.
So, don't be busy scribbling down the figures that I'm firing out, firing off as we go along. Just get a copy of the notes and, and they're all written down there. OK, I'm gonna move now on to Youngstock housing.
And here's your second question. So change your brain from cows to calves. What is the optimum environmental temperature for a one week old calf?
There's a couple of options there. Yes, Owen, I've launched that whole question for you. So the options are 0 to 10 degrees, 10 to 1513 to 1817 to 25, and 22 to 28 degrees C.
Oh, the votes are coming in thick and fast this time. People aren't as shy, which is good. I'll just give you a couple more seconds to consider your answer.
And I'll close the poll question now. Oh, so, we, nobody has said 0%, 0 to 10, so 0%. Then we've got 21% of attendees, say 10 to 15.
And then in joint, top options were the 13 to 18 and the 17 to 25 degrees C. Both of those options were 32%. And then for the last option, 22 to 28 degrees C, 16% of attendees chose that answer.
OK, thanks, Stacey. So the correct answer is 17 to 25. They're very, a newborn calf, they're like us really.
You know, what temperature do you like in your car when you set your temperature on the, in, in, in the, in your car? It's round about 2022 degrees, something like that for most people. And baby calves are the same, but it creates a challenge, because that's quite different to their moms.
So, whereas an adult cow. Their ideal temperature is between 5 and 15 °C. As I said before, that problem is usually keeping cool.
They generate all the heat and they're ruin. And they need to get rid of that heat. A calf, newborn calf has an ideal temperature of, around about 17 to 25 °C.
That's their, that's their optimum. And then if you look at the arrows either side of that, those are the critical high and critical low temperature thresholds. Which is dangerous to their health.
So getting below 5 °C and then that calf may. Actually have, clinical hypothermia. So, not only is their production, their production losses are reduced once they get below 17 °C, because they're using a significant amount of their, feed to maintain their body temperature rather than to grow and to be healthy.
But below 5 degrees and, and that's very critical because they can actually, die of hypothermia. So that's a challenge. Because if there's anything like you guys, as it is for me today, sitting in Cheshire, it's about 3 degrees outside, it's cold, it's wet, it's miserable.
And there's gonna be lots of baby calves nearby. Who would be like us feeling the cold, and what can we do to try and try and meet their needs. There are 3 things that we need to provide for calves in terms of their, in terms of their environment.
And it sounds very easy when you write them down, but it's quite hard to achieve, in, in reality. So they require warmth, fresh air, and they need dry. You look at a shed like this on the picture, and you might think, oh, that's a great shed.
Lovely. Open sides, ridge at the top. But don't forget that you can't rely on stack effect ventilation for baby calves.
Really, stack effect ventilation only really comes into its own when an animal gets to at least 150 kilogrammes in weight. And that's because they don't generate enough body heat unless you have them really packed in like sardines. They don't generate enough body heat to drive the stack of effect ventilation.
So, looking at what their heat production is, well, if a dairy cow that's produced 50 litres a day, produces, 2 kilowatts per hour, so she's like a, a two-bar electric fire, in terms of heat production, a baby calf, newborn calf only produces 0.1 kilowatt per hour. So you need 20 baby calves to produce enough as much heat as one cow.
And therefore, although this warmth fresh air dry sounds very easy, it's a real challenge because you do not get enough heat being produced to drive stack of ventilation. Therefore, the fresh air and the warmth of very, very difficult things to, to to balance. So looking at possible solutions.
Well, calf coats, they're very sensible. So I hope that there's lots and lots of calves around here on a day like today at 3 °C and cold and wet and miserable, who actually have got calf coats on. And I've seen them, well, I think we've all seen a, an increased popularity of calf coats over the past few years, and that's great to see.
And farmers will usually tell you, that they would never go back to not having calf coats. The obvious thing they see is the calf, calves grow faster. They're converting more of their feed into growth rather than just staying warm.
The only people, or the only farmers I've ever come across who, who, who haven't stuck with calf coats, have given the reason that they just find them difficult to wash. So you need to have some system. You need to have some system for, for, washing calf coats and drying them obviously between calves.
Hutches, they allow calves, if they're well bedded, to snuggle up, and, and nest and, and, and stay warm in that way. Solid pen walls, they can be useful as well to reduce the, the draught and, and again, a bit more snuggle factor, to keep warm. So those are all possible solutions.
But the most important thing in my mind is having plenty of bedding. There is something called the calf bedding score. This is from Ken Nordland, Wisconsin University, but it's also been.
refined a little bit by the guys from cow signals. Very, very simple score. You see it on the left here, where score one is there's not enough bedding, to cover the calf's legs.
The legs are fully visible. Score 2 is the legs are half visible, a reasonableness, but score 3, that's what we want, really good, deep bedding, which fully covers the straw sorry, fully covers the legs. And that's what we're after, and that allows carbs to, to keep warm to a large extent.
So this is the shed I showed you in that first picture which you sort of first go in, oh this is a great shed, nice and open, open sides, open ridge, but a calf nest score of one and those calves, they were shivering and they weren't looking well. And there was a lot of disease in that shed, and I suspect that because they were cold, that was one of the main reasons why. Next thing, try and keep them dry.
So. In my view, drainage is probably more important than ventilation in this view, sorry, in this respect. So a calf that's drinking 4 to 6 litres a day is gonna be producing 4 to 6 litres of moisture per day, mostly in urine but also as faeces.
So, try and take or consider how you can take the vast majority, if not all of that fluid out of the shed as it's being produced. Because if you leave it just to evaporate, and that's having a cooling effect and it creates a very humid environment which is not good for pneumonia calf health. So here's an example of a drain at the front, and, another example where you've got slattered, bottoms to the individual pens, which allows drainage.
And yet a deep straw bed can be built up on top of those slats. Very, very simple test that you can do is the wet knee test. So you just go into a calf pen, you kneel down for 30 seconds and you look at how wet your knees are, and the target is, they should be dry, and it can be done.
So just examples of showing that picture of some detail of of of drains that might be effective. One thing that I like to do is actually ask farmers to measure the amount of liquid that comes out of a shed from their drainage as a good indicator of how effective they are. So a drain might be there and they may think, oh, I've got the shed drained, but if only 1 litre is coming out of that shed, and the shed's got 30 calves in.
Then that's a very small fraction of the amount of of liquid that's being produced is actually draining out of the shed. And in particular, drain the feeding area. So this is a, a group of calves that are on an automatic feeder, and it's concrete over the feeding area.
They actually go in that little shed, that little hut for the feeder. But there's the feed and the water is on the outside of that little hut, and the area in front of that is concrete with a little bit of sawdust on top. So that means that they bedded area, the straw, deep bedded area.
Stays dry. And that's, that's the kind of deep bedded straw that I'd like to see. That would be a score 3 where you can't sit in the calf's legs.
And in that situation, they'll be able to keep themselves warm. Similar thing again. So outside, igloo situation with a covered bedded area and concrete-based, feeding area with drains.
So a lot of the moisture that the calves have been producing in this shed will be going down the drain because they tend to wee, soon after they're fed. just some pictures and ideas really, here. This is a, a beef, calf shed, on a dairy farm.
Where I was really pleased. I'm feeding 10 litres of milk per day, which is a great idea. It was ad lib.
But then you look in the bed and it was absolutely soaking cause all those calves are therefore urinating around about 10 litres a day, and it has nowhere to go apart from soaking into the bedding. So the risk there was of pneumonia because of the poor ventilation, or the poor drainage that was, that was creating a very, humid atmosphere. So do not confuse Excess inlet, i.e wind for ventilation.
Although, we may have to rely on wind to ventilate a lot of sheds depending on, on, on, on what else is, is available, what's being used, particularly when there's no stack effect. We need to control the wind speed so that when there's high winds, you haven't got draughts at calf level. So this is just a little bit of a diagram of what's happening when you do get stack effect ventilation.
So stack effect ventilation will work if you have enough heat generated, so the temperature inside the shed is greater than outside the shed. It's really easy to see where the stack effect ventilation is happening. You can either use a a smoke bomb, and set that off and see what's happening, or just get a thermometer.
And if the temperature inside the shed is the same as it is outside the shed, then there's not gonna be any stack effect. So it's something you can get involved with quite nicely. I put up a resource at the end which shows where you can do some cal get find some tables and graphs to do some calculations in a bit more depth in depth for working out stack effect ventilation.
Where you are not going to achieve stack effect ventilation, there are other options. So mechanical ventilation is a possibility. So there's air tubes.
There's quite, again, quite a lot of science really to get these right, cause that air tube should have a, a nice distribution of air, leaving the tube all the way along its whole length. And it should cause circulation of air in the building, but without causing a draught at calf level. So you do need a certain height of the building in order to be able to use one of these tubes.
Think of old shippings, for example, where you sometimes see calves housed, those ventilation tubes are often not suitable because there isn't the same height to position the tube. The target is at least 10 complete air changes per hour. I favour some of these designs here, which allows some kind of self regulation of the calves.
So this is, calf igloos. The calves are kept in groups of 10. And when you look at the baby calves, you'll see a lot of them, a lot of the time they'll be spending inside the, inside the igloo, where they can again nestle up and keep warm.
But as they get older, they'll move outside to the cupboard, bedding area. Because as they get older, they will be generating more heat. And again, they probably will be losing that heat rather than, rather than keeping warm.
So that tends to be as they, as they become ruminants. OK, so it was a bit of a whistle stop through some of the aspects of calf housing. I'm now gonna look at transition cows and that leads us on to your next poll question.
This is the final poll question. So which of the following is correct about feed space requirements for pre-carving cows? OK, Erin, I've launched that whole question.
So there are just 3 options this time. They need some space to milking cows, they need more space than milking cows, or they have a lesser requirement for space compared with milking cows as they eat less. OK, I will end that whole question now.
And so, we had 11% going for option one, they need some space to milking cows, and overwhelming majority of people, 89% said they need more space than milking cows, and nobody chose the third option, 0%. Yeah, well, well done, because the correct answer is they need more space in milking cows. So it's true, they do eat less.
They eat a lot less than milking cows. But they have a reduced appetite, and it's quite a challenge. It's a bit of an art actually to keep dry cows, eating, or keep their dry matter intakes high, which is good for conditioning the room and for post calving.
And so they need more space. So they have additional needs, transition cows and pre-carving cows and, and, and recently carved cows. So they need extra space because they're pregnant.
They're bigger cows. So, there's no point putting them in the same cubicles that you would put in, milking cows because they're wider. They need extra feed space because they have a reduced appetite.
So that it's even more important that there's less conflict, at the barrier and that they can eat all at the same time. They need extra comfy beds because they're heavily pregnant and it's not so easy to get up and down. And if they're fresh carved, they're sore, so it's not as easy to get up and down.
And they need reduced stress and disturbance, even more so than for milking cows. And all this is achieved by having a target of 75 centimetres or more feed space per cow. As I said at the very beginning of the webinar, always build a facility for 130% of the average so that they're never overstocked and loose housing is commonly used for, particularly dry cows or cows coming up to calving, in order to accommodate for their need for more comfortable beds.
It's also important to try and minimise the moves and the group changes, if possible, in the, dry cow yard, which can be difficult if you have a far off and a close to dry group because they're moving from milking to far off, and then far off to close to, and then close to to fresh carved. There's quite a lot of movements in a short space of time. Probably in larger herds, it's easier to move in groups of cows.
So, so, say for example, if you have a 300 cow herd, perhaps just have one day of the week when you do the movements, and there's always more than one cow that's being moved from one group to the next, and that can reduce the stress if they're moved in at least, at least pairs. This is an example of a typical kind of UK pre-carving yard or carving yard, and it shows some nice dimensions where about 2/3 of the space is, is deep straw bedded and about a third of the space is concrete, scrape area which can be kept clean. And it's nice to see a, a curb that separates those two areas to keep the, the bedding area as dry and clean as possible.
And it's also nice to see that the water trough can only be accessed from the feed passage, which means that a lot of the urine will go onto the feed passage, not into the beds. And it's also nice to see that it's got a, a, an open. Space along the whole length of that, interface between feed passage and bed, which often, farmers make a mistake, perhaps putting up barriers and then then then maybe just 1 15 ft opening where cows have to move from the bedded area to the feed area.
And again, that can restrict feed intakes. My rule of thumb that I use is for a bedded area like that to have at least 1 metre squared per 1000 litre milk production. So if we look, if we sort of looked at that previous picture, if you've got cows in there that are 10,000 litre cows, and I would like to see a 10 metre squared per cow bedded area, and then it's about a third as much again.
For the standing area, as a rough rule of thumb. And that's taking into account the high yielding cows, not only do they produce more muck and urine, but they are at greatest, risk of mastitis. And of course, the space allowance and the deep bed, a straw bedded area like that is very much, about mitigating the, the risk of mastitis.
Just some examples where they've almost got it right, but not quite. I think both of these sheds could be improved by having a curb between the bedded area and the feed passage area and the bottom right shed is overstocked. I, I can tell that just without counting the cows, but, that's definitely not, anywhere near, 6 to 8 metres or 6 to 10 metres squared per cow lying space, which is, the minimum requirement even if the cows were only given 6000 litres.
It's also a good idea to have a handling area. So here's an example of a very simple handling area for carving cows or fresh calved cows, either to administer treatments such as, a warm water drink after calving or harvesting the colostrum from a fresh carved cow in order to give it to the, to the calf. This is, an example of a, fresh carved area, which I don't tend to favour.
It's, it's sometimes quite common to see carving pens right next to the collecting yard. And it's not a great area. It's often a very humid and damp, place, the collection yard.
You can see the dog is in the middle of the of that middle pen eating the cleansing, which is not a good thing to see from a Neospor disease risk point of view. But these beds tend to get very damp and and a high risk for calf disease and for mastitis as well. This is an American farm, this is their carving area.
They operate what's called a just in time carving policy. So the car, the the pre-carvers are housed on deep sand beds, until the point when either the feet or the water bag is showing, at, second stage labour and the cow is then walked into this calving area, she'll be here for about 45 minutes or so, just while she completes the calving. The calf is taken immediately and fed colostrum, and the cow is milked immediately to harvest colostrum for.
For actually not her own calf, but for other calves in the system. So it's just in time calving policy, but always the calves are, are born onto a clean environment, and the cows and also are, are kept in a very clean environment. Another example of the UK farm this time.
Looking at nice handling facilities in the calving area. So this is a carving yard. The cows in this case are not moved from, from that yard to carve.
They're put in there about two weeks before expected carving date. They carve on the yard, but immediately they have carved. Again, the, the calf is taken away and fed colostrum and the mother is, is taken to the treatment area where she can be fed a drink of water, and her colostrum milked.
To feed the calf. And this kind of concept has been developed by again the cow signals guys, and they call it the pamper pen and cuddle box and I quite like it as a concept. So the idea is, is that the calf is removed as soon as prac.
Tickle, practically possible, after carving and put in a little box in front of the cow and the cow can lick her calf dry, which is good for the mother and for the calf, while the, the lostrum is harvested, which can then be fed to the calf. And then the calf is removed into a clean, dry pen, and the mother can go into a fresh cow group. So that's the pamper pen and cuddle box.
And, it's been taken up by at least one manufacturing company called Spider, which I think is a Dutch company. And then, that's an example of their Spider cuddle box. So have a look out for that, and it's a very simple modification that a lot of farmers can make to their current calving accommodation.
I think it's great. So, either, either get something similar or, or, or encourage your farmers to, to buy that spinder design. This is a similar example.
This is actually Grovenor Farm, near Chester. But, you can see there's a handling pen or handling gate, in this individual carbon pen. The calf would have been removed immediately after birth, and the cow is just kept in this pen, just for 24 to 48 hours, enough time to harvest a colostrum.
And to ensure that she's eating the correct amount or an adequate amount and that she has that sort of special care and attention that a fresh carved cow deserves. And another example of a carving area. This is a farm that's chosen to carve on sand, which is from a mastitis and, and, other health perspective.
Great. The sand bed needs money and very grippy as well, so it's fantastic from a, cows a little bit wobbly, or, so after carving they can get up and down very easily. Fantastic from that point of view.
It's a challenge from keeping it clean point of view. So, this yard is actually poop scooped twice a day to remove the faeces. And the calves do have to be removed straight away because, it is a real hypothermia risk for calves, sand beds like this, certainly in the UK.
Might not be the case in, well it won't be the case in, in, in African countries, for example, or, or the Middle East, but in the UK calves on sand beds get very, very cold. So they need to be removed, removed straight away to a warm individual pen or warm mixed pen. And the final picture I'm gonna show you, which is, is a concept, if you like for this transition period, is the idea of a stress-free carving line.
So Wendella, you might recognise this because it's actually one of the farms at Nottingham University, looks after. So it's a farm in the UK and the idea is to have. To try and reduce the stress of When cows are moved from the pre-carver group to the calving area.
There's only a gate that separates those two groups. And the environment for those cows stays pretty constant between immediately before carving to immediately after carving. The only difference is they're moved from one side of the gate to another side of the gate.
Their diet changes, but the environment doesn't. So the pre-carvers are kept in this area closest to. There is a small calving area which can be, so an individual cow can be penned off but only used if necessary.
And a cow can have her, colostrum harvested, in, in, in that area, with a portable milking machine, if necessary, if she's not well, or, or, or timing of calving doesn't, fit with her being milked through the parlour. And then after carving, she moves closer to the parlour, which is at the far end there, into the fresh cow group, where she might stay for two weeks, depending on her, Needs and depending on the space in the shed. So she's doing very well and she's fine, on all four cylinders, as it were.
She may go into the cubicle shed sooner, but if she's, perhaps, perhaps a fresh carved heifer that had a difficult carving, she may stay in that fresh carved group for a longer period of time. Because it's a straw yard area. It's a small group.
It has a bigger feed area compared to the cubicle shed. It has the soft beds with no restrictions compared to the cubicle shed. So a cow's struggling to get up and down is more likely to get up and down easily.
And with it being a small group, it means that they can be milked and returned to their beds in a very short period of time. So let's say it's a group of 24. And if we had a hair and bone parlour that was 24 aside, it's one side of the parlour.
That's what I'm saying. They would come out, they'd be milked, and they Straight back into the beds again. And that's a nice thing to be able to provide for a fresh carved cow compared to a fresh calved cow that goes into a main cubicle shed of let's say 200 cows, where her milking turnaround time may be 1.5 to 2 hours.
So that's the concept of a stress, so-called stress-free calving line. That arrow just shows where the milking parlour is. OK.
That brings me to the end. I'm conscious I've done a bit of a whistle stop tour and and just looked at some aspects in more detail than others. But that's because I wanted to introduce as much as possible in the space allowed.
That the, there are, there is a handout that I prepared, using some of the slides, from this webinar, and that's got some of the key measurements on, for example, for cubicles. So you're welcome to use that. But just Other resources that are useful that I found useful on building design and some of the measurements.
There is a building for the cow book, which is part of the cow signals range. There is the AHDB dairy, dairy housing best practise guide, which could be downloaded from the AHDB dairy website. So that has a lot of measurements in for various bits and bobs.
And then there is also a website, which is from Canada, which I'll, just, draw your attention to called Dairy Logics. And that's fantastic, particularly for, farmers that are considering converting sheds or building a new robot system has some really good plans and diagrams there for what dimensions are important to consider for that kind of layout. So there's some resources that you can go to.
OK, so thank you very much. Stacey, I'm conscious I've not left a lot of time for questions, but please please do feel free to ask them. Yeah, that's great.
Thank you very much, I mean, we have had quite a few comments and questions coming through. Your presentations are always amazing, and I'm really pleased that you could join us today. And I loved, and I probably will quote you on it, at some point when you said about, you need to get people thinking about how much milk they can get from the shed.
And not so much about thinking how much milk you can get from the cows, so yes, I think that's a quote that I may use in the future. You're welcome. As I say, we've got lots of questions, coming through right at the start, we had a comment that said, thank you for mentioning the working environment, which has probably driven the exodus from pig farming.
So just making sure that the setup is convenient for people who are using that space. And again, another comment saying thank you for explaining cubicle design. Why, oh why can't the London Underground give us the same consideration?
And, we've got lots of thank yous coming through. People really like the wet knee test and the bedding scores to highlight potential concerns. More questions that are coming through now.
How would Owen advise to go about starting a conversation with a farmer who's not got the best housing available? OK, well, it's why I like K Signal's workshops. So, Capsicum's workshop, if you've not heard of them, is, is, is really, it's always best me again, this is something a little theme that was mentioned by Wendeler about the communication skills with farmers.
People's own ideas are always going to be their best ideas. An idea that's given by someone else, can fall on, on stony ground or, or, or just deaf ears. So it's always the trick is trying to encourage people to, to have their own ideas.
So cow signal's workshops are great for that because it gets farmers off their own farm onto other farms, to see what other people are doing. And the design of the workshop is very much so that, you know, you encourage the guys, the, the, the, the farmers who attend to draw their own conclusions and make their own observations. It's about seeing things that they wouldn't otherwise see.
And that then can lead very easily into those kind of quite radical changes that farmers that you that you might want farmers to to make. And so. Either invite, another person to, host a, sorry, to, to facilitate a cow signals workshop, for you and your clients and invite the farmers along that, that, that you think would benefit, or, or become, involved in cow signals yourself by receiving some cow signals training, so that you might do it yourselves.
So cow signals workshops work particularly well when they're hosted by a farm that is better than average. Because that's a learning experience in its own right, because you see what they're doing. So there's, there's, there's a, there's a good practical example of how to, how to engage farmers in that area and start that conversation.
Great. That's brilliant. Thank you very much, Owen.
And just one last question, in terms of the just in time calving areas, how difficult is it in the practicalities of staff monitoring and moving the cows into that area just in time. Oh yeah, really hard. I mean, it's it's suitable for large farms, it needs 24 hour supervision if it's going to be done properly, and usually in the UK the farms aren't large enough.
So you look, you're not looking at 1000 cow units to enable, those, those systems to be used. That the, the diagram I, sorry, the photograph I showed there was a 4000 cow farm, in America. And they have supervision of the carvings.
But in the UK it's pretty difficult. Although, that said, there are farmers that are prepared to do it with the aid of er CCTV. Oh yeah.
And they do, you know, they get up in the middle of the night and check a car that's that's due to carve, and they do try and as best they can operate that just in time carving policy. And often it's, it's farms that have the pre-carvers housed on cubicles in cubicles, and they'll move them just onto the straw just in time for the carving to. To, to happen.
And, and maybe not stress too much if they miss the odd one that carves in the cubicle. It's not, it's usually not the end of the world. Yeah, probably better that way than moving cows too soon into a carving pen and then the cow, because she's been moved, then has delayed carving and that can affect calf viability.
Yeah. OK, great. Thank you for clarifying that.
And thank you so much again for your, webinar today.