Outdoor Individual Portable Pens Compared with Conventional Housing for Raising Dairy Calves

Abstract

New-born calves are often housed in areas contaminated by other calves or older cattle. Under these conditions the mortality rate frequently is very high. Often, high losses occur in herds where even better than average management and housing facilities are available (1, 12). It has been reported that the use of outdoor, individual portable pens that are moved once each week to break the life cycle of coccidia is an aid in keeping young calves relatively free from clinical eoccidiosis, as well as other diseases (4). A comparison of these pens with four other types of enclosures over a 9-year period under laboratory conditions revealed that calves in the portable pens had lower morbidity and mortality rates and required less labor than calves in the other enclosures (