New newsletter: 

Making Your Calf Care Team More Robust

 The latest issue of the calf management newsletter is now posted at www.atticacows.com.

ENJOY!

Hot Weather Calf Care Tips

As the official beginning of the northern hemisphere summer gets closer, we need to think through our calf care strategies to limit heat stress effects.

Visit the fact sheet in the calf management resource library, " Hot Weather Calf Care Tips", just two pages of practical daily practices that can be used to make things easier on the calves.

Enjoy

Calf Management, behavior and Welfare Webinar

July 13, Noon Central time

To register, visit www.hoards.com/webinars.

Prof Emily Miller-Cushon from the University of Florida will be the presenter.

Dairy calf care broadly affects behavior, including social interactions and feeding patterns, which impact calf performance and welfare. Miller-Cushon will discuss how early life experiences further influence development behaviors that persist beyond the preweaning period.

Enjoy.

Old Standards and New Standards for Passive Transfer

Just for review the old standards used since the 1980's to define "successful" passive transfer have been5.2 grams per deciliter (g/dl) or10 grams per liter (g/l).

In a talk given to the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association, Jason Lumbard DVM with USDA-APHIS reviewed a new set of proposed standards. 

Categories     IgG Levels           Total Protein          Equivalent Brix          Proposed % of Calves

                      (g.L)                     levels (g/dL)          levels%                       in each category

Excellent       Greater than or     Greater than or       Greater than or          Greater than

                      equal to 25.0         equal to 6.2            equal to 9.4               40%

Good             18.0 to 24.9          5.8 to 6.1                 8.9 to 9.3                  Approximately 30%

Fair               10.0 to 17.9          5.1 to 5.7                 8.1  to 8.8                 Approximately 20%

Poor               Less than 10.0     Less than 5.1          Less than 8.1            Less than 10%

These certainly are challenging if you only standard has been 5.0 or higher for success. 

More on Volume of Hay Fed Post Weaning

All of us have gotten the message about not overfeeding hay at the time of weaning. A research group at Penn State University set out to calibrate the percentage of hay in the ration that would give the best average daily gains. Rations varied from percentage of dry grass hay included from a low of  10 percent to increasing amounts of 17.5% to 25%. The work was done by Lucas Mitchell under the supervision of Jud Heinrichs.

Monitoring these heifers from 9 to 16 weeks of age they found as the percentage of grass hay increased the average daily gain, intake and metabolizable energy intake went down. More hay equals poorer performance.

Take home message: "Levels of grass hay greater than 10% may reduce intake and growth before 16 weeks of age. Too much forage to soon can limit intake and performance."

Don't Wait to Feed Water

The 2020 version of the United States FARM minimum standards for calf care call for water feeding for newborn calves by day 3. 

Recent research looked at the question of how early water feeding makes a difference in the digestive system of very young calves. The work done at Iowa State Univ. compared the species of bacteria present in the gut between calves offer water at birth and those offered water at 17 days.

Digestibility was better in the calves fed water at birth compared to those that waited until 17 days for water feeding. Additionally, even out to 5 months of age early-water fed calves compared to those with delayed water feeding had a 24 pound (11kg) growth advantage (440 lbs. vs. 416 lbs, 199.5kg vs 188.7kg)

With my own calves I fed 1 quart (about 1 liter) of fresh water after both morning and evening feeding. It's hard to recall exactly, but if my memory is accurate some of the calves were regularly consuming an observable volume of water by the end of the first week. 

Keep Vaccines Cool This Summer

"Temperature influences the efficacy of some pharmaceutials" says Maureen Hanson in a recent issue of Dairy Herd Management (May/June 2020, p 24)

It the job of the calf care persons to manage the environment for the vaccines that play an important role in preventing disease in the herd's calves. 

Suggestions included in this brief review reflect the industry recommendation to keep vaccines in the temperature range of 35 and 45 F. (1.7-7.2 C).

How to do this:

Suggestions are:

1. Monitor their temperature before use - while in storage. A study in Idaho found that only 35 % of refrigerators checked on-farm stayed in the 35-45F range 95% of the time! Only a third! I would say it is time to buy a thermometer for the refrigerator if you do not already have one.

2. Keep vaccines cool while you are using them. 

In practice I always used a cooler with an ice pack in the bottom when carrying vaccines in hot weather. Once on site, I only mixed one bottle at a time, gave injections, came back and mixed another bottle. 

Let me share a story about a dairy that complained that their vaccines were not working (in the summer). I arrived shortly before noon on a hot summer day - it was already 90F. Two workers were ready to start giving injections. All four bottles of vaccine had been mixed and were ready to go - sitting along with the syringes on the hot tailgate of the pickup truck. No cooler, no way to keep vaccines cool from the time they came out of the refrigerator back at the utility room. Syringes were hot to the touch.

My recommendations were:

1. Change the time of day for vaccinating. I would prefer vaccinating very early morning (between 5 and 6 am) when calf body temperature is lowest. The highest calf body temperature will occur regularly around 5 pm so that is the time to be sure to avoid.

2. Put all vaccines in a cooler avoiding direct contact with ice (don't want to freeze them) and keep them there until they are ready to use.

3. Only mix as much vaccine that can be used in 15-20 minutes - especially under hot environmental conditions. 

4. Keeping the syringes in a cooler will help, too.