Calf nutrition: Progressed and perfected by LifeStart
In 2010, Trouw Nutrition started the LifeStart vision, prioritising a calf-focused approach in its ruminant research efforts. Fifteen years later, how has this concept advanced our understanding of calf nutrition, and what is next?
Dairy cattle productivity has risen significantly in recent decades due to advances in genetics, reproduction, nutrition, and management, helping animals reach their genetic potential. However, the sector faces challenges in health, welfare, costs, and sustainability due to regulations, market shifts, and consumer demands. Tackling these requires innovation in calf nutrition and management.
Trouw Nutrition’s Ruminants R&D team, based in the Netherlands and backed by a global network, is at the forefront of developing and validating solutions to support farmers in navigating these challenges. The team is uniquely positioned to innovate, research, and validate solutions that address the complex economic, social, and environmental challenges farmers encounter today.
The window of opportunity
The foundation for long-term dairy productivity begins at birth. Early life nutrition during the critical ‘window of opportunity’ pre-programs a calf’s metabolism, influencing growth, health, longevity, and sustainability. If we can make full use of this window and provide the right nutrients at the right time from an early age, we unlock the full potential of our cows, supporting breeding age, growth, health, longevity, and sustainability.
This concept is known as metabolic programming is widely studied in humans. One of the first studies to demonstrate metabolic programming in humans showed that rapid weight gain from as early as the first 6 weeks of life was associated with obesity at 8 years of age. But also, the opposite counts, as shown by the famous Dutch Hunger Winter study. This study provides an almost perfectly designed, although tragic, human experiment in the effects of intrauterine deprivation on subsequent adult health. Over the years, the human studies have been supported by controlled (or laboratory) animal studies in primates and rats, among others. Yet, this concept of metabolic programming remains relatively new in livestock.
A new vision for better calves
Metabolic programming in humans aims to prevent diseases like obesity and diabetes. In dairy farming, the prevention of diseases, and overall health and welfare, are key focus areas as well, although the goal of metabolic programming in farm animals is different as our focus is to both promote longevity and produce high volumes of high-quality milk for human consumption.
To get a better grip on the required scientific focus and long-term strategic thinking on this topic, Trouw Nutrition introduced its LifeStart vision in 2010. LifeStart became a research programme 2 years later, fully focused on metabolic programming during a dairy calf’s critical window of opportunity. In the last 15 years, LifeStart research has shown that metabolic programming during the first weeks of life has a significant impact on organ development, leading to better growing calves, earlier breeding, and increased milk performance later in life.
Activating metabolic programming
Embracing the concept of metabolic programming begins with re-defining the definitions of calf health and reconsider our current objectives. In calf rearing, early weaning, lean growth, number of antibiotic treatments, and diarrhoea scores have been important key performance indicators and will remain to be. At the same time, they are focus on the short term. The metabolic programming approach forces us to think beyond the short-term results and allows us to incorporate new objectives, including calf development and health, gut barrier function, lifetime health and production and metabolic resilience.
However, this shift takes time. Dairy farmers believe in the long-term effects that many decades of genetic selection brought the dairy industry and easily recognise traits like coat shine or diarrhea scores. Concepts like gut health and microbiome balance are less visible and harder to grasp. Demonstrating their importance with clear proof is therefore key to driving change in calf nutrition and rearing.
Restoring volume and composition
An important part of inducing metabolic programming is around the volumes of milk fed per calf per day (plane of nutrition). Human studies show both overfeeding and underfeeding cause health issues, and similar insights apply to calves. While natural milk intake by calves is high, commercial farms often apply restricted feeding to cut costs. But is it truly cost-effective? Long-term studies from LifeStart showed that feeding 8 litres of milk, versus 4 litres per calf per day, adds 300 days to the cow’s productive life (equals 1 extra lactation and more income) and reduce age at conception and calving.
LifeStart also explored the milk’s composition’s role in metabolic programming, leading to key breakthroughs, including ways to translate the good properties found in cow’s milk to CMR to reap the benefits of nature and support healthy growth and lifetime performance. The latest LifeStart science found a way to restore the individual fatty acid profile of cow’s milk in calf milk replacers (see box).
Future areas of research
Nutritional programming is emerging as a powerful tool in dairy farming, much like genetics, with growing recognition of its long-term health and performance benefits. Since LifeStart began 15 years ago, knowledge of metabolic programming in calves has advanced rapidly. And this is just the beginning.
In the next 15 years and beyond, LifeStart will further refine calf milk composition, improving nutrient quality, mineral balance, and functional ingredients to enhance health and performance. Microbial programming also offers new possibilities for longevity and productivity. A new era in calf nutrition is here, one where the calf leads the way to a more sustainable dairy future.
Trouw Nutrition will open its new Dairy Research Facility in Boxmeer, the Netherlands in 2026. Stay tuned.
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