David Bergin farms between Rosegreen and Fethard in South Tipperary with his father Dennis. He sources his Natural Stockcare products through Star Fuels and Farm Supplies in Clonmel and Mitchelstown. Before dairy, it was tillage, beef, and horses. They run 160 Holstein-Friesian cows doing around 7,000 litres a year on just over 600 kilos of milk solids. It’s a relatively dry farm — calving starts on the 10th to 15th of January and they aim to have cows out from February onwards.
They haven’t had historic issues with calf scour. But David isn’t the type to wait for a problem before acting. “We were always open-minded about incorporating new products into the system,” he says. “This looked like a very good product for us to try.”
How BioBalance Fits the System
Each cow is vaccinated for rotavirus in December. After calving, she’s milked straight away with a single milker and the colostrum is tested on a refractometer — if it reads over 22, the calf gets it. If not, they use stored colostrum from a higher-reading cow.
From there, BioBalance goes into the transition milk at a rate of 20ml per calf. The milk from the freshly calved group goes into the milk cart, BioBalance is added, and it mixes as it comes down with the spinner on the cart. Simple, no fuss.
The plan was 28 days. They went well beyond that. “We were so happy with the way the calves were performing — the shine on them, how giddy and athletic they were, jumping around — they just seemed so bright and full of energy. You could see it in them. A bit of a gloss, a bit of brightness. Really, really healthy-looking calves.”
They kept BioBalance going until the calves were on once-a-day milk — roughly ten weeks. “It was simple to mix it with the milk. As opposed to trying to keep milk separate for calves without BioBalance in it, we just continued on.”
The Results
David weighed the calves at dosing time, as he does every year around the same stage. This year’s group were 12 to 15 kilos heavier than the same stage in each of the previous three years.
“The only difference was feeding BioBalance,” he says. “So I’m going to have to put it down to that.”
Beyond the scales, it was the evenness of the group that stood out. “Such an even, level group of calves. When you see them lined up at the trough — there’s not much difference between the liveweight of the top one and the bottom one. You’re always going to have your good and poor calves, but this year they’re all at a very close stage.”
The bought-in heifers told the story in reverse. “We had to buy in some because we didn’t have the numbers. At this stage now, you would notice the difference between the calves that were bought in and the ones that had BioBalance from the start.”
Calves That Are Easier to Manage
The short-term differences showed up from day two. “The calves were up much quicker when you’d come down with the quad with the milk. Much easier getting them to go to the feeder to suck. Less trying to hunt them up and rush them to the teats. They were up, they were bright, they were vibrant, they had loads of energy.”
“When you walk out of here and close the door and they’re all after getting their drink and they’re happy and jumping around the shed — you know, you’re content walking away.”
The Investment Case
At around €10 per calf, David has done the maths. “Even if a heifer does an extra 100 litres in her first lactation at 45 cent a litre — there’s €45 back straight away. If I can get more of these heifers in calf first time round, that’s three weeks extra milk in the tank. That’s €200-plus.”
“And if a calf is sick for three or four days, they’re back around 100 to 200 litres in their first lactation. You’re down €40 to €50 for the sake of a €10 investment. I feel like this will pay for itself.”
He has recommended BioBalance to local dairy farmers and to the farmers buying dairy-beef calves from him. “Two of them continued on it and they’ve come back wanting to buy more calves than they usually would, because they were so happy with the progress.”
“We tried BioBalance and I must say it was a big success. We’re delighted with the product.”
To find out more about BioBalance for your own calves, get in touch with the Natural Stockcare team or visit the full Natural Stockcare product range.
