But are numbers correct?
FrieslandCampina shares concerns about calf mortality
RTL Nieuws showed the calf mortality on Tuesday, where the presenter indicated that he was not surprised that they were welcome at the companies where things are going well. That surprise is partly unjustified, because things are not in order at only 1 in 5 companies. Once again the calves are in the spotlight, but why is the public so eager to believe that a dairy farmer is bad for his calves?
A good basis is needed for everything and also for a good dairy cow. The basis here is the calf, which starts as a fetus with the development into a good cow. The first years of life, and out research shows especially in the first weeks, are the most important and determine whether a calf will grow into a cow that can grow old and produce enough milk.
A heifer calf is therefore valuable, but dairy farmers also have every reason to keep them healthy when it comes to bull calves. This may be to later use the calf that has grown into a bull as a breeding bull, but even if the animal leaves the yard, it is of no use to a dairy farmer if an animal dies. Apart from the fact that no one benefits from a dead animal, it also costs money to Rendac to pick up the animal.
Since Animal & Law, based on figures from the Animal Health Service (GD) announced on 13 February that an increasing trend is seen in the number of calf deaths, the subject has been given full attention. About 13,3 percent or 350.000 registered calves died prematurely in 2015. A monitoring carried out by the GD on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The service assumes earmarked calves up to 1 year old per quarter. If 3 die in a quarter, the percentage of dropouts is 7,9 percent.
44
percent
'On 44 percent of dairy farms, not a single calf died in the third quarter of 2015,' according to the GD† LTO tells RTL Nieuws that the death rate is high at 1 in 5 companies. Calf rearing is about time for the calf, attention, person and protocol. Something that is independent of the size of the company. Nevertheless, this is now regarded as the cause of the rising failure rate at the companies. It is also stated that calves are given too little colostrum, which contains everything that is good for them, but it is forgotten that there is also very good milk replacer on the market.
What is known is that calves are particularly vulnerable during the first few days. It sometimes happens that there is a disease among the animals or that animals die without a real reason being found. Setbacks that a dairy farmer tries to avoid, but which do not always succeed. In a few cases there may be conscious neglect, but then there is also an Animal Inspector.
As FrieslandCampina states through Jan-Willem ter Avest: 'In principle, the dairy farmer is responsible for the welfare of his calves on the farm. A calf deserves good care and important steps have already been taken in the sector in recent years to improve the welfare of calves. When animal neglect is established, milk refusal follows immediately. Reports are always investigated.'
This does not alter the fact that FrieslandCampina is also concerned about the increasing numbers of failures. What makes it difficult is that it is not known on which farms the numbers are so high 'and therefore also not whether it concerns FrieslandCampina member dairy farmers'.
Dirk Bruins of LTO puts a critical note on the story to RTV Drenthe. He states that 2016 calves were born in his company in 110. Of these, 7 died at birth or died of illness. But he also sold 50 calves, which means that at the end of the year the GD counts 50 earmarked calves, 7 of which died. Which gives a completely different outcome when calculating the mortality rate.
Practice in 2015 shows that there were more dairy cows in the Netherlands. Logically, the number of calves also increased. Because a dairy farmer maintains a fixed number of calves for renewal of the herd and phosphate rights were introduced on 2 July 2015, it is a reasonable idea that more calves were sold than in an average year. If the mortality rate increases parallel to the size of the herd, but fewer calves are kept, the mortality rate does indeed increase.
It still applies that every calf that dies is one too many. The NVWA has launched an investigation, but there may also be work to be done in the sector, because if the current monitoring is no longer in line with developments in the livestock, will it still have added value? After all, it does not provide advice with which animal health can be improved, or is there concrete evidence that more calves die on larger farms than on smaller ones? Shouldn't the sector have that information?
Dairy farming operates in a society that is increasingly said to suffer from fear of the agricultural sector. This increases the need to do business well and improve the image. The current posts do not contribute to that. What does help are the #puppy love messages that found their way to the public on social media again on Valentine's Day.
Herman van den Pol
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