Practical implications of calf housing systems in the UK

With the rise in input costs putting ever higher pressures on profit margins, the end goal of successful calf rearing, to ensure a healthy and profitable animal that is reared in a time and resource efficient manner, has never been more important. Calf mortality remains high in the UK, with reports of 4.5% (Johnson et al, 2017) in dairy calves in the first 2 months of life, and a further 6.0% of dairy calves dying within 3 months of birth (Hyde et al, 2020). Calf housing has one of the biggest environmental and management impacts on health and welfare, and this will be explored here in this article.

There are multiple housing systems currently used to house and manage pre-weaning dairy calves on farms in the UK. These include a mixture of individual and group hutches, indoor pre-fabricated partition pens (Figure 1) or larger group pens within buildings (Figure 2), and outdoor pasture-based rearing systems. The cost of different housing systems varies widely, with individual calf hutches costing £200–400 each, group hutches for 10 calves costing £3000–8000 each depending on the make, and a shed for housing calves ~£80 000 depending on the size required. This should be borne in mind when advising farmers to change their calf housing type, as initial outlays may be considerable in larger farms.