Introduction
In case you missed it, the Calf Notes family has grown! The five-year goal for Calf Notes is to expand the educational offerings in the area of calf nutrition and management, and to incorporate new channels of communication including video, calf courses, and seminars. Our first new offering is called “What’s Happening?”. This is a new video series that takes a “deeper look” into an interesting video or photo that Jim captured during a visit to a farm during his forty-plus year career. These photos “tell a story” and we use the media to provide a teaching moment in calf management.
What’s Happening? is 100% free and available at https://wh.calfnotes.com in both English and Spanish. Our first Season of videos is now available and we’re working on Season 2 to be released in early 2026. Since What’s Happening may be new to Calf Notes readers, I thought it useful to summarize each episode in Season 1. This Calf Note will review the first episode – “Pellet Quality”.
Episode One
The first “What’s Happening?” episode describes a photo taken on a farm in Denmark taken about 20 years ago (see below). This is a great example of starter with poor pellet quality.
What’s Happening?
So, what was happening on this farm? Fines are small particles that break off feed pellets during manufacturing and handling. The primary problem with fines is that calves don’t like to eat them. They may also have a different nutrient content than the original formula, which changes the nutrients that the calf ultimately eats.
The chart shows the difference in protein, fat, and zinc concentration in the pellet and fines fractions of a sample of turkey feed collected and analyzed from a turkey feed taken from a farm at Kansas State University. This changes what the animal eats. In this case, fines were lower in protein but higher in fat and zinc, indicating the difference in nutrient composition. Several other examples of this problem were presented in the video from other photos I took on farms from around the world along with samples of “nice” starters with minimal fines.
Where do fines come from?
Fines certainly occur when feed pellets are handled roughly, such as transport over rough roads, or passing through several bins, elevators, and legs. The proportion of fines is also affected by feed manufacturing, including how the pellets are formed (pellet dies, conditioning, and particle size), which contributes about 60% of the risk of fines in a feed, as well as ingredients selected, which contributes about 40% of the variation in fines, as we see in the chart below. Some ingredients, such as wheat or use commercial pellet binders, can improve pellet quality.
Conclusion of Episode One
Episode One ends by providing several resources for more information regarding the factors affecting pellet quality, how fines affect animal performance, and how we can improve pellet quality through proper feed formulation.
The video is just over four minutes in length and informative as well as entertaining. Don’t miss it! You can view Episode One and links to the entire first Season of What’s Happening? in English here and in Spanish here.
What’s Happening? has been great fun to make and a new contribution to the Calf Notes mission of “Helping Calves grow”. Stop by and take a look at Episode One and the rest of the first Season. I’m sure you’ll enjoy them!