7Z5 Custom heifer raising is not common in Ontario. There are only a handful of commercial custom heifer feeding operations and even fewer that have been established long enough to qualify as successful businesses.
Most agreements involve small numbers and part time labor utilizing otherwise empty facilities.
Many are seasonal and based on nonworkable pasture land on a neighboring cash crop operation. Despite its unpopularity, custom agreements for heifer raising can have major benefits for both the dairy producer and the custom feeder. Custom raising is far more common in the U.S., undoubtedly because of the different structure of the dairy industry. To the dairy producer, the main benefits of a custom raising involve freeing up resources for other uses. This producer looks at the space, feed, time and management resources used by heifers as resources that would otherwise be available for milking cows.