Starting strong
From left, Jess Wadley, Wayne Evers and Shaylah Schouweiler are leading the calf care efforts at Evers Dairy in Kellogg, Minn.
Cold winter days are no match for the calf barn at Evers Dairy. The bright, airy barn is insulated, ventilated and warmed with in-floor heat, keeping calves and their caretakers comfortable year-round.
Wayne Evers and his three brothers are among 20 family members involved in Evers Dairy, a 2,000-cow farm near Kellogg, Minn. Two of Evers’ daughters, Shaylah Schouweiler and Jess Wadley, take on management of the farm’s calves as they grow. Their new calf barn, built in 2019, was designed to make the workload easier and prioritize calf health.
“We raised our calves in outdoor hutches before,” says Schouweiler. “It was harder on us and on the calves in the harsh winter months.”
Before investing in a new calf barn, the family did extensive research and toured seven Midwest calf facilities. They were looking for a barn design that would meet the farm’s needs now, and in the future, Evers said.
None of the facilities the Evers toured were ideal for their goals, so the family developed a custom design. The result is a barn well-suited for raising dairy and beef-on-dairy calves, a vital part of the Evers farm.
“The value of our calves has increased so much since we built the barn, both as replacements for our herd and calves that we sell,” Evers explained. “We’re glad we invested in their health and care when we did.”
MEASURING UP
The Evers, like all AMPI members, are required to complete a Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Animal Care evaluation every three years. The evaluation is administered by AMPI staff evaluators and looks at a number of key measures on a farm. Calf care is one of them.
“The Animal Care evaluation is a benchmark that allows us to highlight the great care our AMPI farmers give to their animals, while ensuring best management practices are used on every member farm,” said April VonRuden, AMPI FARM program director.
The calf care scores at Evers Dairy are a measure of their dedication to improvement and calf health.
“We have to invest in our calves; they are the foundation of our herd,” Evers said.
Three key practices the Evers employ to support that foundation include:
1. COMFORT FOR CALVES AND EMPLOYEES “Labor is our biggest expense, so our biggest priority in building this barn was to reduce the labor needs for our calves,” Evers said. Providing a comfortable barn for calves and people helps the farm retain good employees.
Schouweiler and Wadley tackle calf chores most mornings. Built-in conveniences allow them to complete the daily work for their 400-plus calves in just a few hours.
Easy-to-clean pens reduce the time required to provide the calves with clean, dry bedding on a weekly basis.
Feeding milk from the parlor saves money on powdered milk replacer. To reduce the labor needed to move buckets of milk across the farm, they installed a pipe directly from the parlor to a tank in the calf barn. The milk is then pasteurized and moved to another holding tank, waiting to be fed via the “calf taxi,” a motorized cart that allows each animal to be fed without physically hauling milk.
2. CLEAN PENS, HEALTHY CALVES To promote calf health, the Evers family prioritized an easy-to-maintain layout when deciding how to build their new barn. The family designed the calf pens and built them in their shop to achieve exactly what they wanted.
Each pen is made of fiberglass rods that can be configured as calves age. The rods can be inserted to create individual pens where the calves spend their first few weeks of life. They can later be removed to easily convert to group pens of up to 10 animals. The rods are sturdy, easy to move and clean, and relatively inexpensive. Every two group pens share a water trough.
Wide alleyways between the pens allow for a skidsteer to easily maneuver and clean the pens. It even allows for a truck and trailer to be driven right through the barn, making calf moving easy, too.
In-floor heat makes the Evers calf barn different than any they toured while researching facilities. While this means they have to stay on top of keeping calf pens clean to reduce odors, the heated barn is more comfortable for calves in the harsh Minnesota winters.
Each pen is cleaned weekly. Soiled shavings are completely removed and replaced with a thin layer of fresh, dry bedding. Dirty shavings are never covered with clean shavings.
3. QUALITY COLOSTRUM “Even after we moved into the new barn, it wasn’t until we adjusted our colostrum practices that we noticed a dramatic uptick in calf health,” Schouweiler said.
In the past, colostrum amounts would vary depending on how much each cow produced. Calves weren’t given colostrum until the morning feeding, no matter what time they were born overnight. Today, the colostrum is bagged, pasteurized in a special pasteurizer and warmed before giving it to each calf in the first hour of its life.
Also helping is a custom feed ration for dry cows that prioritizes colostrum quality and production, Evers added.
The farm family’s journey of calf care has involved trial and error, Wadley said. It’s taken years of learning and adapting to hit on the ideal balance.
This bootstraps education has led to focuses on labor, cleanliness and colostrum — practices that are helping each calf at Evers Dairy grow into a healthy cow, ready to join the milking herd and produce in the years to come.
FARM program updates calf care standards
In 2024, the FARM program updated these calf care standards:
COLOSTRUM Revision to how colostrum feeding standards are evaluated. Calves must meet colostrum quantity (10% birth weight), quality and timeliness (within 6 hours) guidelines or show evidence of successful transfer of passive immunity.
DEHORNING Elevate pain management standard. Acceptable methods for dehorning are caustic paste and cautery.
If your farm doesn’t currently meet these standards, reach out to your AMPI field representative. They will help you create a plan of action to ace your next Animal Care evaluation
