Anupro recommend that all calves remain on our Superior Calf Programme until six months of age. This is to ensure continued positive programming to imprint the established higher trajectory resulting from early-life metabolic programming. Furthermore, this consistent high plane of nutrition will promote rumen functionality, gut stability and immune competence to deliver optimal growth, health and development. Introducing a predominantly forage based diet, especially grass, too early in life can lead to energetic imbalance and excessive pressure on the liver, which can create sub-optimal performance and health problems.

The Anupro ProHeifer Programmes; ProHeifer and ProHeifer Spring, are tailored to optimise production within the high-yielding all-year-round calving system and the seasonal grass-based system respectively. Whilst Anupro strongly recommend keeping heifers housed in a controlled environment until six months of age, the ProHeifer Spring Programme (see chart) is designed to facilitate the introduction of grass at 3 months of age whilst maintaining access to ad lib concentrate. For the first month, it is recommended that calves be kept on a very low cover paddock to ensure intake of PapinGrass is optimised. Only after calves have transitioned to EconGrass may they move to a rotational grazing system where access to ad lib concentrate (EconGrass) must be facilitated until six months of age.

Transition during any system is critical and it is important that heifers are introduced to new feeding regimes slowly. When introducing forage / grass, this should be done over a 4-week period with a slow transition to the forage diet. The goal is to minimise nutritional stress, eliminating the risk of disease and maintaining a positive response to deliver on breeding targets. 

At service, the ProHeifer programme targets Holstein heifers of 14 months of age at 65% of mature body weight and a wither height of 130cms (see Chart below for other breed targets). This growth trajectory is a critical part of the Dairy-Catalyst programme for 2 reasons;