What are calf hutches and WHY are your calves in them?

Here in the North East lots of little boxes known as calf hutches are a familiar sight, but few people know much about them. All too many think they're used to raise calves for veal. This is NOT the case, so I would like to set the record straight.

The many benefits of housing calves separately can be summarized simply as management. Individual housing allows us to know exactly what is going in and coming out of each calf. This helps us monitor their development as well as identify illness. This may surprise you, but most of our calves can’t talk (ok, none of our calves can talk). The most common signs that a calf isn’t feeling well are loose manure, called “scours”, or lack of appetite. Individual housing allows us to know quickly and certainly which calf is scouring or not eating. We can then give that calf the extra attention and treatment that she needs.

Sick calves bring me to the next reason for individual housing. Kind of like kids at day care, calves in groups can spread illness to each other pretty quickly. Keeping a calf separated from her peers early in life, while her immune system is developing, limits her exposure to bacteria other than her own and therefore reduces the risk that she will get sick. Each of our calves is given their own plastic hut with their own hog panel (3’ fence panels) to form a run in front of their hut, their own grain bucket and their own milk/water bucket. Obviously we reuse these items, but the huts and buckets are sanitized between calves, and if a calf is sick, her buckets can be sanitized more often.

A calf hutch may look small as seen from a passing car, but it is no little box. A mouse living in an ice chest would feel more crowded. A calf enclosure in over seven feet long and more than three feet wide. It is deep enough to protect the calf from summer sun and winter wind and is kept as clean as a doghouse. It has a large open doorway facing south, a window facing north and a ridge vent in the roof.

As soon as a newborn calf has received that first vital nursing of colostrums from its mother, it is given ear tags and taken to its new home, usually a hutch with a large fence around its entrance. The hutch has been steam-cleaned since its last occupant, lined with fresh straw and moved to a new position.

Next time you pass a dairy farm, stop and let your children pet some of the babies. These future milk cows will even eagerly suck your fingers. Don't feel sorry for them. They are both happy and healthy.