Tagged with 'Calf health'

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.

A difficult birth can have a negative impact on health, performance, and survivability of youngstock. We must aim to not only reduce levels and severity of dystocia but also put protocols in place to manage calves from difficult births.

Reduced calving age from one year to the next may suggest improved calf and heifer rearing; however it is months later when we can make these assumptions. If a heifer is first served at 18 months old, it can be assumed that there are improvements to be made to allow future heifers to reach service weight earlier. But it is difficult at this point to then determine at which stage of rearing that this heifer didn’t meet her targets and fell behind.