A cow’s life is a story. Like any good book, the opening chapters set the foundation for what comes next. Birth weight, colostrum quality, early health events and growth trends may seem like small, isolated moments, but together they influence her lifetime performance.
“When we don’t record calf data consistently, we just don’t get the same follow-through toward health or production goals,” said Craig Walter, senior educator for VAS. “We can move toward improvement, but we can’t prove our progress without data.”
The story of a productive cow begins long before she enters the milking parlor, and we build that foundation with the data we track early in her life.
Set the foundation at birth
What happens in those first hours sets the tone for everything that follows. Consistently recording calf data gives you the clarity to spot opportunities, make improvements and eliminate guesswork later on.
Key newborn metrics, such as birth weight, weaning weight, serum total protein, colostrum quality, navel health, vaccination records and treatments given, help you determine whether a calf is getting the start she needs.
“It can feel like a lot of information to track, so begin by focusing on respiratory cases, navel infections and growth rates,” said Connie Walters, DVM, calf and heifer specialist for Purina Animal Nutrition. “Trends in these areas often explain later health or performance challenges.”
Recognizing these early patterns can help prevent small issues from becoming larger problems. For example, a farm Walters works with tracks serum total protein on every calf. Their numbers were still above industry averages, but a slight downward trend signaled something wasn’t right.
“Their pasteurizer had a small burn spot that was denaturing proteins, and it was only caught because we had the data. When we did our weekly analysis, we noticed a slight drop in serum total protein,” said Walters. “Once it was fixed, serum total protein, health and growth rates climbed back up.”
Later in life, this early data becomes even more valuable as you work to understand why a cow may be underperforming or why a group isn’t meeting expectations.
Tracking early-life nutrition and health data can act as a roadmap for understanding a calf’s trajectory. Colostrum quality, treatment patterns and weight gain all signal whether she’s on track to become a healthy heifer and, eventually, a productive cow.
Decades of research point to the same conclusion: early growth pays off. Even a 0.1-pound increase in average daily gain before weaning can translate to hundreds of pounds of milk in the first lactation.
“Calf growth rate always shows up somewhere in milk production,” said Walters. “I’ve never seen a negative result.”
Post-weaning management matters too, yet it’s often the least documented. Group changes, diet adjustments and respiratory challenges can quietly shape performance and these trends can go unnoticed if they aren’t tracked.
One example Walters recalls involves calves that developed respiratory disease around three months of age following nutritional inconsistencies at weaning. Those challenges didn’t affect calf performance immediately but surfaced during their first lactation.
“We couldn’t pinpoint a single cause of the drop in production in early cows,” said Walters. “But year-over-year trends helped us understand what level of production was normal for the farm and what was not. We reviewed the calf data and identified trends in respiratory disease and inconsistent nutrition, both of which can affect first-lactation milk production. This data helped explain a possible cause of that drop.”
Calf data isn’t only about tracking and improving animal performance—it can also help strengthen teamwork and communication.
Walters often translates key metrics into Spanish and shares simple dashboards during monthly team meetings so everyone can see how their work affects calf outcomes. When employees understand the why behind protocols, compliance and consistency improve.
“When teams see how their care shows up in the data, it motivates them,” said Walters. “People want to do good work and showing the impact helps them do it.”
Linking calf data with later heifer or lactation performance also helps connect teams who don’t typically overlap. Maternity staff can see how colostrum handling affects passive transfer weeks later, and calf managers can see how early treatments or growth trends show up again at breeding. This helps everyone see how their role fits into the bigger picture.
Make data entry simple and useful
Recording calf data can feel time-consuming, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that the payoff is worth it. Today’s herd management tools, like mobile apps that allow for calfside data entry, make the process faster, easier and part of your team’s daily routine.
“The more data you enter, the more value you get from it,” said Walter. “The right tools help make that process simpler and help drive better decision-making.”
With herd management software like DairyComp from VAS, you can record birth weights, serum total protein, treatments and growth events. This makes it easier to:
• Track trends across groups or seasons
• Compare healthy calves with those that experienced respiratory or scours events
• Monitor growth and weaning metrics
• Build lifetime records that connect calfhood to future reproduction and health
Every calf record is a piece of a larger story. When those pieces are easy to capture and connect, you can improve calf health and the trajectory of your entire herd for years to come. — VAS
