Calves with Sam

Failure of Passive Transfer

Inadequate transfer of antibodies from the dam's colostrum into the calf's blood is a failure of passive transfer. 

While the process is biologically determined how well the transfer takes place on modern dairies is determined by how well humans manage harvest, manage and feed colostrum to newborn calves.

A recently reported study of calves in California dairies shows how widely these success rates can vary.

Dairy     Percent Calf     Blood Serum Total 

              Mortality          Protein (Average)

#1            3%                      6.4

#2            6%                      6.2

#3            7%                      6.2

#4           28%                     5.5

#5           39%                     5.7 (huge variation here from high to low BSTP so the average here

                                                   hides many, many calves with very low BSTP)

What we do as calf enterprise managers makes a difference.

Quality

Quantity

Quickly

These three words describe the foundation of colostrum management and all three of them depend on calf care personnel.

Reference: Dubrovsky, S.A. and Others "Bovine respiratory (BRD) cause-specific and overall mortality in preweaned calves on California dairies: The BRD 10K Study." Journal of Dairy Science 102:7620-7328 August 2019.