How to Make a Bad Situation Worse:

Dirty Calf Pails After Washing!

During a recent farm visit I took the opportunity to check out the pails they have washed. All the 10-quart plastic pails (buckets) are washed before going to the hutch for a newborn calf. 

I have recently been using the Hygiena SystemSure Plus unit to do ATP monitoring. The ATP test is a process of rapidly measuring actively growing microorganisms through the detection of adenosine triphosphate. An ATP monitoring system can detect the amount of organic matter that remains after cleaning a surface (for example, calf feeding equipment). 

Thresholds used in the food processing industry are less than10 RLU for direct food contact surfaces and less than 50 RLU for environmental surfaces. For reference, on this same farm the inside surface of a grain feeding pail for a 3 week-old calf tested at 354 RLU; same pail 8 week-old calf = 366 RLU.

Now, back to the "clean" pails.

We tested the top pail in a stack of 15 "clean" pails. It was dry. The RLU value was 2925. Lots of remaining organic matter post-washing. 

We tested the bottom pail in the same stack of "clean" pails. RLU value was 5776. Ah. Stacking pails after washing appears to be an effective way to increase bacteria presence.

Thus, not only does the dairy need to do a better job of cleaning their pails but also needs to work out some way to set the pails upside down separately so they can drain and dry.

The recommended protocol for washing is found HERE.

Starter Grain Intake by Age

for Milk-Fed Calves

As part of a research trial the starter grain consumption was measured daily. (Laberge, R.J. "Early starter intake by nursery calves: the impact on growth, health and gastrointestinal development" Minnesota Nutrition Conference, pp 134-135, 2013).

Calves had ad lib water and starter grain. They were fed 22:20 milk replacer at the rate of 1.5% of birth weight (for example, 90 pound birth weight = 22 ounces (612g) milk replacer) mixed at 12.5% solids until 42 days of age. Then for days 43-49 they receive one feeding daily. No forage was fed. 

The average age at which the calves reached selected intakes of starter grain were:

    Starter Grain               Age

    Intake level                (days)

(Grams)   (Pounds)

   250          .55                19

   500         1.1                 24

 1,000        2.2                 31

 2,000        4.4                 44

On the basis of slaughter data of these 18 calves the authors hypothesized that gastrointestinal health could have been improved by the addition of small amounts of forage to the ration after a benchmark level of starter grain had been reached. For example, after 1,000 g/day level was reached add 20-40 grams of hay (0.1 lbs.).

Based on my on-farm observations with many dairies there is a significant problem using level of grain intake to begin adding forage to the ration. Most calf rearing enterprises that house calves individually do not measure or estimate in any way daily starter grain intakes. The grain pails are just kept between 1/4 and 3/4 full without any significant effort to track consumption rates.

As Straw Intakes Goes up, Gains Go Down

Among 8 Week-Old Hiefers

In a research trial (Hill, T. M. and Others, "Roughage amount, source, and processing for diets fed to weaned dairy calves." The Professional Animal Scientist 26:181-187 2010) that ran for 56 days weaned Holstein calves from a single dairy were fed a 21% c.p. textured grower feed and 0, 3, 6, or 9% chopped wheat straw blended in by hand at the time of feeding. 

The average daily gains 8 to 16 week-old heifers over the 56-day trial by straw feeding rate were:

Chopped straw %            Ave.Daily Gain

                                     (Pounds) (Kilograms)

     0                                  2.8         1.27

     3                                  2.4         1.10

     6                                  2.1         0.96

     9                                  2.0         0.89

Other growth measures were Hip Width, Body Score; they also declined as straw intake increased.

In contrast, when grass and alfalfa hay were fed at low levels (3%) average daily gains increased. 

As feeding rates of these forages continued to increase beyond 3 percent, however, rates of gain tapered off.          

Checking Colostrum Quality

On-Farm Tools

Have you used a Colostrometer or Brix refractometer?

They are on-farm tools for assessing the antibody concentration in bovine colostrum. Neither of them directly measure antibodies. Rather, they use highly correlated indexes to make rough estimates of actual antibody concentrations.

In a recently published article (Bartier, A. L. and Others, "Evaluation of on-farm tools for colostrum quality measurement" Journal of Dairy Science 98:1878-1884 April 2015), the authors reported that both of these instruments were effective for identifying poor quality colostrum. 

That is, they worked quite reliably to exclude low concentration colostrum from first feeding for newborn calves. 

As an aside, this study again reported just under thirty percent of the samples measuring as "poor" quality - less than 50g antibodies per liter (that is the internationally recognized lower threshold for colostrum acceptable for first feeding for heifer dairy calves). 

By lactation the average immunoglobulin type G (IgG) concentrations were:

First lactation         62g/l

Second lactation    60g/l

Third+ lactation    70g/l  

These averages emphasize for me that we should be checking colostrum from first lactation dams - a lot of that colostrum is just as antibody rich as colostrum from older dams. 

Robotic Milking & Colostrum

I visited another dairy with robotic milking equipment. This dairy, like several others I have visited, does a great job managing the cows and producing lots of milk.

However, this dairy, like several others I have visited, manages to highly inoculate the colostrum by the time it goes into the nursing bottle for the calf. 

How can this happen? Well, let's start at the beginning. We want clean teats for colostrum collection. Is the robotic milker equipment set up to prepare fresh cow teats for milking? Not necessarily depending on the dry cow housing. In robotic barns I recommend restraining fresh cows post-calving and manually cleaning up the teats with special attention to teat ends - don't depend on the robot to do the full job on these cows. 

Next we need clean milking equipment. I have not seen any gaps in sanitation in the robotic units during my visits. I cannot make any recommendations for improvement at this step.

What comes next? Well, it depends on the brand of robot. All of them send the colostrum to some kind of holding unit. Almost uniformly none of the ones I have seen receive special attention to prepare for colostrum collection. I recommend cleaning using a simple four-step washing procedure. Click on this link, Washing Protocol, to access the procedure.

If the storage unit is judged to be clean, nevertheless, I recommend a quick rinse pre-collection with a hot water bleach solution. This is the same recommendation as I make for any colostrum handling system.

Where there may be some delay in feeding and/or processing the colostrum I suggest adding a food preservative such as potassium sorbate to extend the generation time for bacterial growth. A brief summary of how much product to add to various quantities of colostrum can be found HERE. Other information on potassium sorbate use in colostrum is at www.calffacts.com.

A quick summary about using potassium sorbate in colostrum at the DairyHerd magazine archives can be found at this location - click HERE.

How are the heifers doing?

This is the universal question - I ask it every time I am on a farm or meet a client.

Hidden, however, in this question is another question. That one is, "How do I measure the development of my heifers?"

An associate recently shared an Excel spreadsheet he uses to summarize the information collected from the heifers on his clients dairies. 

As you already would guess the first five columns in the spreadsheet are these:

ID  BirthDate  MeasurementDate  Weight  Height

He and the dairyman agreed on the development goals - mature cow weight and height.

Then, the next two columns are what caught my attention. They are:

                                           MatureBodyWeight  MatureHeight

                                             (Percent)                    (Percent)

For a 2 month old                     11.0                          56.9

For a 5 month old                     25.7                          70.0

For a 12 month old                   55.7                          80.0

As I scanned the spreadsheet I picked up some contrasts that began to raise questions about the heifer enterprise. For example, let's compare two sets of heifers:

One heifer 1.7 months old       10.4                           56.9

One heifer 2.2 months old         8.3                           55.2

What is happening to have the second heifer 15 days older than the first weighing only 125 pounds  compared to her pen mate at 156 pounds?

or these two heifers:

One heifer 4.1 months old       25.0                           67.5

One heifer 5.6 months old       25.3                           71.7

What is happening to have the second heifer, 45 days older than the first, at the same weight?

The percent of goal achieved works quite well in capturing the variation in rate of development. You might want to try adding these columns to your growth spreadsheet.

Let's Raise Our Bull Calves

We have a good market, price is good, costs look reasonable, let's do it!

At the beginning the bull calves gained well and brought a good price.

Then, we noticed that our treatment rate for pneumonia in the calf/heifer barn seemed high. The treatment records showed that our impression was correct. Our vet commented on the ammonia odor in the barn when he was there checking out several calves with pneumonia.

Oh, by the way, did you remember that when you double the number of calves in the same space (sometimes called overcrowding) they produce twice as much feces and urine?

This automatic-feeder operation was working well before adding the bull calves. Calves step up to 12L a day and the ten days before weaning they start decreasing one liter daily until weaned. With heifers only there was about 30 square feet of resting space per calf. Pneumonia treatment rates were elevated a little -probably some improvement in ventilation would have been desirable even before the bull raising began.

Then, the number of calves doubled. Ammonia concentration went up. Overcrowding stress increased - space per calf went from about 30 square feet per animal down to barely 15 square feet. Whole-pen treatment for pneumonia began when fall weather arrived. 

Solution to the pneumonia problem?

1. Stop raising bull calves - cut pen population in half. 

2. Install positive pressure ventilation tubes to increase rates of air exchange.

Results?

Current pneumonia treatment rate is well under ten percent and no whole-pen treatment has been needed.