Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) or pneumonia causes inflammation of the lung tissue and airways. Often, its damage is irreversible and you often cannot prevent pneumonia from having an effect later in life. Even mild cases of pneumonia can have an impact on daily live weight gain (DLWG) and feed conversion efficiency (FCE), increasing the cost of production.
The average dairy calf faces many potential stressors in the preweaning period including birth, transportation, disbudding/castration, weaning and mixing.
Most of these stressors are inevitable in calf rearing production systems but are manageable if the calf timeline is considered.
Having colostrum accessible to calves is imperative to the colostrum feeding program. For reasons such as the cow cannot produce enough colostrum, Colostrum is of low quality, or the freshly calved Cow has not been milked within hours of giving birth. Calves are essentially born with little to no immunity. Therefore, the quality of colostrum is essential for disease prevention during the first weeks of a calf’s life.
Calves are more susceptible to cold stress than older animals. This is because they have lower body fat reserves and a larger surface area to body mass ratio which causes them to lose body heat more rapidly.
With rising costs of production, including energy, water and milk replacers, farmers may be tempted to look for potential savings when it comes to feeding calves.
Whether finding yourself in the position of considering moving from milk replacer to whole milk, or rethinking how you feed whole milk, pasteurisation must be explored.
