Careful Calf Management:
A Tool for Scours Prevention
Former calf ranch manager explains the three C’s of raising healthy calves.
Live calves, in any market, bull or bear, will always sell for more than dead calves. After 2014’s prices, who wouldn’t consider tightening up calf-management practices, if only to save just one more calf? The basics of preserving a calf’s life start with preventing illness, which, ironically, starts before the calf even hits the ground.
Former manager of a Holstein calf ranch, Wade Schulties, knows the importance of preventing disease and treating disease when it inevitably strikes. Now a Calva Products Inc. territory manager, Schulties addressed calf management for scour prevention to a crowd of Idaho ranchers at the MacKay Livestock Supply general customer meeting.
He told his audience to remember the three C’s of raising a good calf.
- Colostrum
- Cleanliness
- Consistency
Colostrum
Schulties explained that colostrum isn’t just a thick, yellow substance that suddenly appears moments before a calf is born. Mama has been building that colostrum throughout her dry period. He urged his listeners to think about that cow’s stress level, her nutrition plane, her mineral package and her vaccination program. Those dynamics will factor into the quality of colostrum she produces, he said.
Colostrum quality is measured by its amount of Immunoglobulin G (IgG), an antibody. Schulties stressed the importance of every calf receiving a minimum of 90-100 IgGs in the first 24 hours, emphasizing the sooner, the better.
Colostrum, said Schulties, is giving that calf its immune system for the first three weeks of its life.
“The longer you wait, the bigger the uphill battle that calf has,” he said. Upon finding an abandoned newborn, Schulties said, don’t wait. Give it colostrum, and then address the problem of finding the mother.
Most of the time beef cows’ colostrum quality isn’t measured, so Schulties gauged that giving a calf half a gallon of colostrum within the first 12 hours is adequate.
Cleanliness
“Cleanliness can be a double-edged sword,” said Schulties. “A lot of times, if you are calving cows, you want to have nice, clean straw for those calves to lay on. That’s great, the only problem is straw gets wet, and then straw becomes the best environment for bacteria to grow.”
Especially if bringing cattle into a calving barn, he advised producers to create a barrier between the bacteria and the new calves.
“When I was raising calves, we used to make a slurry of a calcium-based lime product. We’d actually paint the calf hutches and let it dry, just to try to put a little barrier between what was already there in the hutch and this new calf,” he explained.
Schulties suggested spreading lime on the ground or fogging facilities with a product that will keep the bacterial load down.
“The best-case scenario, believe it or not,” he said, “keep your cows as far away from each other as possible. Ultimately, if you’re not on straw, you’re not on a wet feed mound, and those calves are going to stay cleaner out by themselves with mom — behind a piece of sage brush or a willow tree — than they will congregated.”
What about the calf that’s born with the sack over its nose? Schulties answered, “If you’ve ever had a train wreck with rota- or corona-viral scours or cryptosporidium or even salmonella, keeping those calves far away from each other will actually be your best friend.”
Schulties encouraged the producers to consistently move their feeding sites to avoid the calves, and their mother’s udders, from coming into contact with feces.
Consistency
In either bottle calves or nursing calves, consistency is key. Schulties said the worst thing that can happen to a bottle calf is for it to be fed at different times and different solids/concentrations of milk replacer. He also advised being considerate of the feed going to the mamas, as well.
“The first three weeks that calf is on the cow, be considerate of what the diet is of your cows. If you start seeing a change in your feed and you’ve got young baby calves, you have a possibility of having issues with your calves.”
“The easier you can step into something different rather than going from one feed to the next feed is definitely going to be a benefit to your calves,” he said.
“Colostrum, cleanliness and consistency with your calves in your programs, that’ll take you further than anything else in my opinion,” concluded Schulties.
Editor’s Note: Paige Nelson is a freelance writer and cattlewoman from Rigby, Idaho.