Abstract The objective of this study was to determine growth and health of Limousin crossbred dairy-beef calves fed alternative milk allowances in an automated group feeding system. The study was conducted at the University of Minnesota West Central Research and Outreach Center’s, Morris, MN dairy. Forty-eight Limousin-sired crossbred calves were assigned to feeding groups by birth order during two calving seasons from September to December 2019 and March to July 2020. Calves were introduced to the Holm & Laue HL100 Programmable Calf Feeder (Holm & Laue GmbH & Co KG, Westerronfeld, Germany) at 5 d and were randomly assigned to one of two treatments. Treatments for calves were 8 L/d (8L) or ad libitum (AL) milk allowance. Calves were weaned from the automated feeder at 56 d. Data were analyzed using PROC MIXED of SAS. Independent variables for analyses were the fixed effects of season of birth, sex of calf (M or F), treatment group and sex of calf nested within season of birth was a random effect. No differences (P > 0.05) were found between 8L or AL groups for birth weight. The AL calves (109.4 kg) had higher (P < 0.01) weaning weight than 8L calves (95.3 kg). Furthermore, the AL calves had higher (P < 0.01) hip height (95.6 cm) and greater (P < 0.01) heart girth (110.2) compared with 8L calves (93.8 cm and 104.8 cm, respectively). The AL calves (1.14 kg/d) had higher average daily gain at weaning compared to 8L calves (0.91 kg/d). Males calves were not different (P = 0.39) for average daily gain compared to female calves (1.07 kg/d versus 0.98 kg/d). Drinking speeds of AL calves were lesser (P < 0.05; 1,222 mL/min) than the 8L calves (1,453 mL/min). The AL calves and 8L calves were not different for hygiene scores or health scores. The results from this study indicate advantages to feeding dairy-beef calves ad libitum whole milk during the pre-weaning period.