Tagged with 'Calf health'

It finally feels like summer is here and hopefully a break from what seems like the longest and wettest winter!

Whole milk is still fed to calves routinely on dairy farms in some capacity or another. But what constitutes “whole milk”?

We have reformulated Start n Wean formula to increase the starch and energy content, helping to further promote rumen development and maintain gut health.

With spring calving fast approaching, kickstarting one of the busiest, most demanding time of year, being properly prepared can relieve some of the stress for farmer, cow and calf.

Back at the start of 2023, the acronym ‘CALF HEALTH’ was chosen by the calf and youngstock team to base their newsletter articles on. Each letter represented a topic that contributed towards improving calf health.

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.

As calf and youngstock specialists, we often discuss different rearing systems and technological advances that can help improve your current calf-rearing system. We work closely with a network of engineers to ensure the machine is installed in the right position, with alternative feed programmes in order to benefit your rearing system.

Unfortunately, far too many farms are still losing too many calves to scours. Indeed, a 2017 study highlighted that in calves under two months of age, scour is the main cause of death. 

What’s more, according to MSD Animal Health’s latest national youngstock survey (spring 2020), 81% of more than 300 farmers surveyed said they had experienced scour in their calves during the last 12 months and 50% of farms had suffered mortalities. On dairy farms, calf deaths due to scour had been seen by more than 65% of units.

Whether it is beef or dairy it is important to grow calves efficiently to meet slaughter weights sooner. Standard target weights of pre-weaning weights are greater than >0.7kg/day and post-weaning DLWG of >0.8kg/day - >1.0kg/day for dairy or beef respectively.

With warm weather approaching, the risk of heat stress in calves increases. Everyone is well aware that heat stress in adult cattle reduces performance, increases stress and results in increased incidence of disease, and calves are no different. Calves have an upper critical limit of 25°C, however they will start to feel the effects of heat stress at 21°C.