What are the Options for Paired Calf Housing?

Some supermarket milk contracts are requiring dairy farmers to house calves in pairs or groups from birth. We believe that the best way to minimise disease and anti-biotic use is to house calves individually until they are around 8 weeks old. But if you have to change to paired or group rearing, what are your options?

Fence your individual hutches in pairs

If you already have individual Calf-Tel hutches, you can adapt our mesh fences to fence two hutches into a single enclosure. We have seen customers do this in several different ways, but this is our preferred option. You can download detailed instructions here.

Use an XXL paired rearing hutch

The Calf-Tel XXL hutch is 42% bigger than the standard individual Deluxe hutch and has plenty of room for two calves until they are 8 weeks old. They come with two sets of buckets and holders and a choice of fences.

Convert your Calf-Tel pens to paired rearing

Calf-Tel pens are free-standing and interlock at both the back and sides. By arranging the pens in two rows back to back and removing alternate side panels, you can create double sized pens while maintaining the stability of the pen structure as shown here.