As Adin learned in our Sweet Dreams project, making sure an animal’s environment is well resourced is essential to providing a life worth living. Deciding what counts, where and how to provide a resource can be a challenge. Interested in what it means to provide enrichment? From brushes to better bottles, there is much to learn about the value of enriching the lives of dairy calves.

In the US, it is common for dairy calves to be in environments that help us monitor their health, but are mismatched with behaviors that are important to calves. In our project, Sweet Dreams, we had the opportunity to make updates to improve both health and meet more of the calves’ behavioral needs.

If given the opportunity, calves will choose to:

• be with friends
• drink lots of milk through a teat
• drink water
• eat forage and ruminate
• choose places to rest that are comfortable for them
• groom

Friends.
Cattle are social animals and this is true from the start. Individual housing of dairy calves is common, but we have good reasons to begin to at least pair them with a friend from an early age. Calves with social contact are more flexible, start eating solid food sooner and cope with stressors like being mixed in a group better than those that are reared alone.

Lots of milk through a teat.
For many years, it was common to feed dairy calves only 10% of their body weight in milk or milk replacer. In order to thrive, calves need more than this, up to 20% body weight at some points in their rearing. Calves that are fed more double their weight gain and produce more milk later in life. Calves are also motivated to suck, 25 to 40 minutes a day. Calves fed from buckets or fast-flow teats can often consume their meals in 1-3 minutes, leaving them still motivated. They then suck or chew on other things, like their housing, their friends, because they still want to have something in their mouth. We want to direct this behavior towards milk instead. One way to do this is to use slow-flow teats or a slower flow rate in automatic calf feeders to make meals take longer. When we more closely matching what calves would do with the dam, this helps them feel full and stop sucking on other things.

Drink water.
Cattle are suction drinkers, meaning they put their mouth into open water, like in a trough or bucket, and swallow in gulps. Calves start to show this behavior from birth. They begin with small sips and quickly develop the ability to gulp. Calves will drink water even when fed lots of milk.

Eat forage and ruminate.
Calves will begin to nibble on hay or grass soon after birth. They will also start to ruminate within the first week, but often do this at night, so we often do not see them start this behavior. It works best if the forage we offer is clean and soft and is easy to break down and chew. Giving calves something to chew on, matching their normal behavior, reduces how much they try to suck and chew on other things like their housing or friends. By directing the calf’s motivation to put things in their mouth towards something normal, like hay or grass, we support their development as a ruminant.

Comfort.
Calves need support to keep their body temperature in the normal range. In the summer, we need to provide shade, even over plastic hutches. Plastic hutches act like greenhouses and without overhead shade, the inside of them can become too hot. In winter, calves need deep bedding and protection from wind, rain and snow. Calves begin to get too cold when conditions are below 50F or 10C. It is important to consider overnight temperatures too. Even in regions where daytime highs are mild, calves need protection at night.

Groom.
Grooming helps calves keep their coat in good condition and scratch their itches. Grooming is an important social behavior. Calves will groom themselves and their friends. If kept with a dam, she will also groom her calf. Calves will use brushes too.

For more information about managing calves, see UW Madison’s Animal Welfare Sciences Website.