Healthy Calves—the Foundation of Dairy Farming: Optimizing Management Through Benchmarking and Best-Practice Examples (Wohlfühlkalb)

The goal of the project is to develop strategies for optimized calf management through close collaboration between the agricultural sector, advisory services, and academia, with the aim of improving calf health and reducing calf mortality.
This will be achieved synergistically through the development and implementation of an app for on-farm data collection regarding calf health and management, featuring automatic performance benchmarking. A calf health report will enable farms to compare their own status quo with the average of the top 25% of farms.
Another approach involves developing recommendations for action based on the current state of scientific knowledge, as well as the results and experiences gained from supporting 40 farms over the course of the project. Based on the data collected by the farms and researchers, advisors will facilitate an exchange of experiences in regional groups (“experience groups”). Through the participation of 20 farms in the experience group meetings, continuous improvements in management and calf health can be promoted, among other things, using best-practice examples.
This is accompanied by knowledge transfer through training events, field trips, and reports—including in agricultural magazines—with the goal of widely disseminating the project’s findings to dairy farms engaged in milk production and calf rearing.

Contact:
Dr. Asja Ebinghaus
ebinghaus[at]uni-kassel[dot]de