Do I still need to feed milk when feeding Queen of Calves?

Yes. Calves need milk. Queen of Calves does not contain milk powder. We recommend the use of whole milk or colostrum/milk mix, ie milk that hasn’t been de-natured, with Queen of Calves. We do not recommend milk powder as a base-stock for adding to Queen of Calves, in the first 6 weeks.

Should I offer Queen of Calves to calves without straw or hay?

No, afraid not. If you cannot provide your calves with good quality roughage it is highly unlikely that you will see the kind of results achieved under trial conditions.

What’s in it?

Queen of Calves and X-Factor are both made from plant extracts; several selected marine plant extracts as well as a number of land plant extracts. The choice of plants has been carefully researched and refined over a period of time. Both products contain selected bacterium strain and vitamins to enhance the calf’s immune function. The final make up of the product is secret and the intellectual property of the manufacturer. Bell-Booth Limited reserves the right to improve the efficacy of the product through continuous research.

Does it have milk product in it?

Queen of Calves is not a milk powder. It looks like milk powder. But that's where any comparison begins and ends. Calves need milk, especially juvenile calves, as their daily source of fat, for energy. Queen of Calves is a supplement to a milk diet and not an alternative. And when using it make sure you add it to milk that hasn't been de-natured, ie whole milk or colostrum, as our research shows it performs best with these milk types.

How much X-Factor will I need?

900 grams per calf. Feed 50 grams per calf each day, beginning Day 1 through Day 18. A full feeding guide can be found on the Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme page

How much Queen of Calves will I need?

On average, you’ll need 10 kilograms per calf. Feed 200 grams per calf each day, beginning about Day 19 through to weaning. A full feeding guide can be found on the Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme page

How much milk should I feed my calves on your program?

We recommend no more than 4 litres of milk/calf/day.  Ideally the calf should be feed twice daily, (a calf’s simple stomach can hold about 2.4 litres of milk), and fed at body temperature, 38.5C. Warmed milk is more easily absorbed and it helps the calf to save its energy for growth.

If you wish to feed the milk once a day, commence at the time you begin your Queen of Calves, day 19, and feed out in the afternoon. You will find the calves are more contented when they are put to bed on milk and Queen of Calves, and offered dry roughage and meal in the morning.

How do I make a premix?

Queen of Calves and X-Factor are fine powders which repel liquid. So they require a degree of mixing to go into suspension. Use 2.5 litres of water for every kilogram of X-Factor or Queen of Calves. The steps to follow are;
1.    Add the powders to cold water.
2.    Agitate by vigorous mixing or by saturating with a hose on fan.
3.    Hydrate for half an hour, (or up to 48 hours).
4.    Then add to warm milk and serve immediately.

Full, easy-to-follow instructions are printed on every bag, and a guide to premixing methods can be found on our website here

How long can I leave a premix before use?

48 Hours

Why don’t you make it as a liquid? Save us the mixing

The reason we market X-Factor and Queen of Calves as powders is because the probiotic are able to be maintained in a healthy viable state, in powder form. As soon as you add water to make a premix, the probiotic are activated and ready to go to work in the calf’s digestive tract.

Do I really need to use hay?

Straw/hay is a very important component of a Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme. Farmer feedback suggests calves consume about double the intake of roughage compared with a conventional calf diet. We think feeding of dry fibre, 6-9 inches long, is  more important in the first 4 weeks than meal. Here’s our recommended top 5 fibre sources:
1 barley straw
2 pea straw
3 ‘roadside summer hay;’
4 meal or pellets;
5 pasture.
Make sure all your calves can access their roughage at the same time. They like to eat together.

I’ve heard calves eat less meal. Really?

The short answer is, yes. But this is an important area and needs some careful overall understanding. Independent studies in the USA show the addition of calf meal or pellets to the diet aids rumen development. Fact.

Research shows calves raised on our nutrition program consume significantly less meal than same breed/birthweight calves raised on an identical diet. However, meal provides an excellent source of protein, fibre and minerals and provides essential nutrition when feed is in short supply. So take a balanced and sensible approach to calf rearing. An understanding of where the various staple ingredients all fit in together, will help you make wise choices and raise good healthy calves.

How does it work?

The probiotic in Queen of Calves and X Factor seeds the digestive tract with billions of beneficial bacterium. This enables the calf to increase its immune function, aiding digestion and helping maintain proper bowel function. Other components interact with milk to increase its clotting properties. We describe that interaction as 'changing the shape of milk', and we think that the changed milk travels slower through the calf's digestive tract, enabling the calf to convert its feed more effectively and efficiently. There may be other interactions in the digestion/feed process that we hope to discover with further research.

For more information on how it works, visit our Science webpages by clicking here

Weaning target weights

We recommend the following target weaning weights;

Users tell us, weaning calves on a Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme is a considerably easier and better experience compared to a conventional calf diet.

Under a conventional diet, calves consume more milk and their digestive system is immature by comparison. Generally, their simple stomach remains the dominant digestion chamber as milk is the principal nutrient. The rumen is slow-developing and at weaning, the immature calf can very often 'starve' for a period of about two weeks, as it adjusts to a pasture-based system.

A calf raised on a Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme has a more mature rumen and a more efficient digestive tract, and it therefore adjusts much better to a pasture-based diet.

As a general rule, regardless of which calf rearing system you use, roughage should be offered in the paddock at weaning to offset the imbalances of spring pasture where the protein to carbohydrate ratios are generally higher than the rest of the year. Meal should also be available to offset any pasture deficiency.

You refer to benchmarking. What does that involve? And what does that mean?

Benchmarking involves comparing the milk production of an individual farm with age and breed matched animals in the district. It's a relatively simple procedure. Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) provides the data and our consultants analyse it and prepare a short report. Benchmarking enables individual farm data to be compared against a district rather than national averages thereby eliminating the vagaries of climate, soil fertility etc . In addition, when benchmarking we look at data over a number of seasons which allows us to analyse productivity before and after Queen of Calves introduction on a farm.

It seems expensive?

There are a number of products and calf nutrition programmes available to the calf rearer. They vary in cost and energy levels. In New Zealand the Queen of Calves programme, costs about $60.00 more than a conventional diet for replacement calves (once milk and meal savings are considered). But, because it takes over a week less to raise a calf, if you factor in labour savings of $400 per week the impact on overall cost is significant.

Now look beyond the cost and consider return on investment. Queen of Calves will lift productivity in the first two lactations by up to 18%, as our research has shown. The benefits page on this website runs the numbers – after the first milking we believe a return on investment of over $300 is possible

I already rear good calves

It takes skill and good management practices to be a good calf rearer. Independent trial work shows that when calves are offered the Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme, a bigger calf is produced in quicker time. The research shows it is a healthier calf because it converts its milk, meal and straw to bone growth quicker than a same weight and breed calf raised on an identical amount of same ingredients. If you already raise good calves, you should raise better and bigger calves, and better-producing cows, on this programme.

It’s too much extra work

A Queen of Calves Nutrition programme requires a small amount of additional work. To make a premix for 300 calves, with the correct set up, mixing can take less than 5 minutes additional work. That's all.

Instead of just pouring milk from a vat into a calf feeder, you need to premix your X-Factor and Queen of Calves, leave it to hydrate, then pour it into the milk. A good operator will be prepared ahead of time and will have staff trained and have everything ready to make the job easy.

I haven’t seen any difference in my calves with Queen of Calves.

Have you watched the DVD? The first interview is with Wayne Shaw. Wayne raised 60 calves on a Queen of Calves program in the spring of 2006. He didn’t pay close attention to the calves but at weaning he looked them over and thought, yeah, they’re ok, nothing spectacular. And Wayne concluded, at that point in time, that the whole exercise was a waste of money. The following spring Wayne raised the calves on his standard conventional calf diet of milk, hay and meal. But when the Queen of Calves-raised calves entered the milking herd as 2 year olds, he noticed these heifers were considerably better developed than normal. They integrated seamlessly into the herd because they weren’t bullied. They milked so well, they produced 28% more milk than 3,000 same age, same type heifers in the same region. They even milked late into May. And it was a 1/100 year drought for the Waikato that season. So from initially “seeing no difference” Wayne later had the foresight to look at the performance of these animals as heifers. And he was impressed.

My consultant won’t let me do it

If your consultant isn’t familiar with the research findings, they may consider the protein content of Queen of Calves is too low to play any significant role in a modern nutrition diet. If so then they may have misunderstood the product. Queen of Calves is not a calf meal to replace other calf meals – it is a product to complement them. Therefore the two products should not be directly compared on the basis of their nutritional make up. By changing the shape of milk (see Question 3 above), Queen of Calves appears to make an impact on the whole substrate (all the compounds a calf consumes), with implications for digestibility, early mammary development and growth rates. Our researchers have dissected the digestive systems of treated and untreated calves and they compared the composition of volatile fatty acids, lipids, enzymes etc. They found increased rumen surface area and increased hind gut fermentation in the treated group. The research therefore suggests a Queen of Calves nutrition program provides a calf with a sound balance of minerals, protein and carbohydrates to achieve outstanding growth rates.

It’s beyond our staff’s ability

Your staff don't need specialist nutrition skills to successfully use and mix this programme. But every successful operation needs good management and systems and staff training. Plan ahead, train your staff in the essentials, and constantly monitor the operation until the job's done.

Can it fit our system?

A Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme requires milk, straw or ‘roadside’ hay, meal and pasture. Most dairy farmers raise their replacement calves using those staple ingredients. Tell us about yours and we’ll be happy to suggest how you could incorporate a Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme. Is it more important to you to retain a standard conventional diet which is energy-deficient, rather than lifting the energy to meet the needs of today's modern genetics, and improve your herd performance?

I’ve heard negative comments

Compare the data. Look at the independent evidence. This is a new concept. When the Queen of Calves Nutrition Programme is followed, research findings suggest the good results discussed throughout this website can be achieved.

I’ve got too much colostrum and I don’t want to throw it away

Invest in a colostrums tank and use BBL Colostrum Keeper and store it for use later in the season.

I don’t believe you, 18% sounds too high

Yes. That’s one thing we’ve discovered since releasing the data. But that’s the precise finding from our 49 farm study performed in 2009 - on average, 18% more milk in the first two lactations.  You can learn more about this study here (hyperlink to milk Production Studies page).
In another study, conducted on a research farm at Massey University, 12% milk gains were observed in the first lactation. And then there is the individual farm benchmarkings we have done that have shown milk production in some instances 20% higher than district figures.
Now do you believe it?

Good quality calf meal?

Yes. The growth rate of the calves will be affected by the components used as ingredients. Feed your calves the best quality, highly palatable, cereal-based calf meal.

end faq