It is becoming more common in the United States to house preweaned dairy calves in groups and feed them using computerized automated calf feeders. However, limited research has been conducted in the USA to describe behaviors of calves when using these feeders. The objective of this observational study was to characterize daily milk consumption, calf drinking speed, number of calf visits to the feeder (rewarded and unrewarded), and calf daily weight gain in 25 farms in the Upper Midwest using automated feeders to feed their preweaned calves; data were collected for a period of approximately 18 mo. We used PROC MEANS in SAS to calculate means and SD for each variable across all farms. Experimental unit for the analysis was calf-day (an average reading per calf/day recorded by the feeder software). We found that drinking speed (mL/min) was 793.6 ± 324.0 (n = 54,747) with a mean/farm ranging from 441.5 to 1,112.5 mL/min. The average daily milk allowance (L/calf) was 8.72 ± 2.29; calves consumed 87.0 ± 20.6% (n = 62,548) of their milk allowance resulting in an estimated daily milk intake of 7.59 L/calf. Mean estimated daily milk intake/farm ranged from 5.5 to 11.6 L/calf. The number of daily rewarded visits (visits when calf is entitled to receive milk) was 4.77 ± 3.40 (n = 53,798); mean/farm ranged from 2.45 to 6.86 visits; however, most farms averaged between 4 and 6 visits. The number of unrewarded visits (visits without milk) was 6.52 ± 7.73 (n = 53,798); mean/farm ranged from 0.96 to 9.94 visits. Daily weight gain (g/d) was 803.5 ± 262.9 (n = 60,205); mean/farm ranged from 568.7 to 1,130.6 g/d. The farm with the greatest milk allowance had the greatest daily weight gain per calf. These behavior and weight gain measurements are most likely influenced by differences in housing and management practices across farms. In addition, some of the feeding behavior measurements recorded by the autofeeder software have been shown to be associated with health outcomes in previous university farm studies. Can we detect these associations across farms in this observational study? Further analysis will explore these relationships.