By Sandy Stuttgen

To earn additional enterprise dollars, many Wisconsin dairies are breeding portions of their herds to beef, while others are raising dairy-beef. Several options exist when marketing dairy-beef and beef-cross cattle, including selling them at less than 1 week of age or fewer than 150 pounds (either as bob veal or to another farmer who will background them), backgrounding on the farm and selling as stockers (about 400 pounds) or heavy feeders (700 to 800 pounds), or finishing them on the farm.

Regardless of the route chosen, beef from dairies is beef for the consumer. Dairies producing these calves are now producing beef.

Best management practices
Beef producers created the voluntary Beef Quality Assurance program in 1987 to assist each other in raising, feeding and harvesting high-quality beef. Backed by national beef quality audits conducted every five years, the U.S. beef industry tracks both its BQA successes and opportunities for continued improvement. BQA focuses on best management practices to prevent food safety and meat quality issues, especially those associated with antibiotic use.

The care calves receive sets the stage for preventing disease, and therefore avoiding antibiotic use and residues, and injection-site lesions. BQA for dairy calves is incorporated within the National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Program. Dairies marketing milk with the National Milk Producers Federation participate in FARM. Most likely, your dairy has discussed calf care with a FARM representative.

FARM states all calves are to receive colostrum or colostrum replacer soon after birth, even if immediately transported off the farm. Research has firmly established the critical role colostrum has for promoting neonatal health and lifelong growth.

It can be difficult for dairies to collect and deliver in a timely manner enough colostrum to the calves they intend to raise, let alone for those they plan to sell. Calves intended for beef must receive the same excellent colostrum as the female calves destined for milk production. Without colostrum, calves have a much higher probability of succumbing to disease threats. Research indicates scour episodes and antibiotics used to treat scours cause lifelong detriments to gut health. Just one respiratory insult may damage the animal’s lung capacity for life.

Dairy farmers are familiar with giving injections. The National Animal Health Monitoring System in its February 2018 report, “Health and Management Practices on U.S. Dairy Operations,” indicates that each cow in the herds surveyed in 2013 received an average of just over one injection per month. Fifty-three percent of intramuscular injections were given in the hind legs, while 22% were given in the neck. The triangular area of the neck is the recommended BQA location for administering all injections, since administering injections in the hips or hind legs damages preferred meat cuts. Many injections cause permanent damage. Meat tenderness is impaired within a 5-inch diameter of the injection site.

The NAHMS survey did not measure calf injections, but it may be inferred that poor injection habits with cows are also occurring with calves. Dairies must not be cavalier with the injections given to dairy-beef and beef-cross cattle destined for human consumption.

The goal is to harvest beef, including those started on dairies, when they are about 15 months old. As compared to healing meat quality issues when raising milking stock that will eventually have a second career as beef, there is no luxury of time for beef cattle.

Well-versed in milk quality standards, dairy farmers must also embrace beef quality standards when they begin producing beef. How dairy-beef and beef-cross calves begin their lives on a dairy has direct and long-term consequences for the consumer and the beef industry.

Stuttgen is the Extension agriculture educator in Taylor County, Wis. This column is provided by the University of Wisconsin-Extension Dairy Team.