Weaning is a very stressful time for calves, whether at 10 weeks old as a dairy replacement or 10 months old as a beef suckler. A change in nutrition is often coupled with social stresses and housing changes. Ensuring this is planned and is as smooth as possible is key; thinking about how long we take to reduce milk feeding and encourage concentrate intakes for the dairy animal, or how we introduce silages and concentrates in the beef system. Nutrition is key to lessen the impact and possible energy crash when the milk is removed. Also, as the cold winter is around the corner, offering calves a minimum of 1kg of milk powder a day will help the calves maintain their temperatures, create an immune system and ensure growth. However, this will need to be stepped down over a minimum of 2, ideally 3 weeks, to achieve adequate concentrate intakes. For the 10 week old dairy replacement they should be eating a minimum of 3kg/head/ day to cover their maintenance and growth requirements.

It also has to be remembered that weaning is the time for cheapest lean growth, as at this age their conversion rates are still high, however the feed cost is lower than that of milk or milk powder so putting plans in place to limit disease at this stage is key to efficient growth.