Acceptable Calf Scours Rate on Beef Herds

Optimizing Dogie Survival at Birth

By successfully weaning more healthy calves, you can increase milk production, reproductive performance and your farm's overall lesser line

Your milking herd of tomorrow starts with the calves born today, Let's have a closer look at the basics to getting replacements off to a sound kickoff to become healthy, productive all-stars on your milking team.

In spite of advancing engineering, dairy dogie death losses remain alarmingly high, and have shown no signs of getting ameliorate. To better your odds of raising healthy, productive herd replacements, your all-time bets are preventing and managing difficult births, and ensuring newborn calves get acceptable immunity from colostrum. This strategy will ameliorate your herd'southward milk production, reproductive functioning and overall bottom line.

When successful, a dairy calf's birth starts a profitable lactation in the milking herd for the mother and a practiced start in life for another herd replacement. It is the culmination of several factors: careful planning of an ideal mating to produce an embryo that volition become a milking herd replacement; dry cow management providing optimum conditions for both mother and newborn; and, in the case of a start-lactation cow, the result of 24 months of feeding, care and direction before the event when she will take her identify in the milking herd.

All also often, this scenario for success never occurs. Canada's stillbirth rate is 12 per cent for first-lactation births and seven per cent overall. About one-half the stillbirths tin can be attributed to hard calvings, known as dystocia.

A difficult calving results in lost production, infection and poor fertility for the dam. Her calf may be weak and suffer from bovine respiratory disease or diarrhea. The calf, cow or both may not survive.

Pre-weaning death loss rates range from 7.8 to 11 per cent, 53 per cent of these losses due to scours and 21 per cent due to respiratory disease. A high proportion of illness and death in the pre-weaning period can exist attributed to failure of passive transfer of immunity. The calves simply go insufficient immunity from colostrum early enough to fight off disease.

Reducing losses

Dystocia is defined every bit a hard or abnormal nascency at any stage of labour. Information technology is recorded on a calibration of ane to iv in Canada, with i being a birth without assistance and 4 being the most severe form of dystocia requiring surgery. Dystocia levels reported in the 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture National Beast Wellness Survey (NAHMS) are higher for offset-calf heifers at xix per cent than for second and later calvings at 11 per cent. It may be nether-reported by dairy producers and more than widespread than survey data indicate.

Stillbirth, defined by Canadian genetic comeback statistics as the decease of the calf at birth or within 24 hours after delivery, occurs in 12 per cent of calvings for first-lactation cows and six per cent of calvings for those in second and subsequently lactations. One-half of stillbirths can be attributed direct to dystocia, and the odds of a calf dying within 24 hours of birth are much higher following a hard calving.

Reasons for dystocia in first-lactation births tend to be related to large fetal size, but in later lactations dystocia is due more to malpresentation-an abnormal positioning of the calf before nativity - or dam-related bug. Dystocia has a profound negative touch on calf health and survival, reducing futurity dairy productivity.

Calving direction and procedures tin greatly minimize losses due to dystocia and stillbirths. They include:

• keeping good records of breedings and expected calving dates;
• having a clean, dry calving facility not used as a sick bay too;
• knowing calving signs;
• knowing when to intervene to provide assistance;
• knowing calving help procedures;
• ensuring newborn calves get adequate colostrum equally soon as possible afterward birth to achieve passive transfer of immunity.

Breeding strategy

Your breeding strategy is a key factor to ensure successful calving. Since the incidence of dystocia and stillbirths in first-lactation calvings is near double that of calvings in later lactations, y'all can reduce dystocia and stillbirths through sire selection to take advantage of genetic variation.

Choose sires to brood heifers that are ranked higher up average for calving ability, a combination of calving ease and calf survival. Sires are ranked according to calving ability and daughter calving ability. For a heifer sired by a bull rated low for daughter calving ability, take actress intendance nigh calving time to ensure successful commitment. Consider sex-sorted semen for breeding heifers, since bull calves born to heifers consequence in a high incidence of dystocia and stillbirths.

Passive immunity transfer

The next critical time in the newborn calf'southward life is nativity to weaning. Preweaning mortality rates range from 7.8 to 11 per cent. 30-i per cent of those deaths in the first three weeks of life accept been attributed to failure of passive transfer (FPT) of immunity from the dam. The only fashion a calf tin can get amnesty after birth is through colostrum. The U.South. NAHMS survey indicates 21 per cent of calves accept FPT, pregnant a serum immunoglobulin (IgG) level of less than 10 milligrams per millilitre.

Primal to achieving optimum IgG levels are the three Qs: quality, quantity and quickness. Feeding high-quality colostrum in the correct quantity chop-chop afterwards birth will greatly amend a dogie'due south chances for survival and good wellness. The newborn'southward ability to absorb immunoglobulins through its gut wall decreases rapidly during the six hours after it'south built-in.

Dystocia and letting the calf suckle on its own have been shown to contribute to FPT. Calves born unassisted but allowed to suckle on their own as well tend to have FTP. They probably practise not receive get-go colostrum in a timely manner.

New tools adult

A big amount of data bachelor on protocols and procedures has been demonstrated to better calf survival. Nearly are simple lists. Withal, keeping simple records and implementing these protocols routinely in the calving pen has ever seemed challenging.

Research in Quebec and at the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary Higher (OVC) is addressing some of these issues. A Quebec report, conducted with co-operating dairy farmers, developed and evaluated an informational tool to improve calf and heifer management practices. Similar OVC work is assessing calf vigour at birth and developing protocols for calf direction.

An alarming number of calves die at or about nascence, and an equal number suffer from less-than-optimum health afterwards they are born. Having protocols and procedures in place for pre-calving, recognizing the signs of birth, following calving procedures and caring for calves immediately after nascence tin can help you achieve successful calvings with low death losses and maximum calf survival and vigour.

Potential savings

Hard calvings hurt your operation economically through lower production, reproduction, and calf and cow survival. An Iowa Land economical report adamant the total cost of dystocia for an average Holstein heifer is $28.53, while the economic loss associated with severe dystocia is $380. Relative losses are 41 per cent from lower product, 33 per cent from reduced fertility, 7.5 per cent from cow loss and 17 per cent from calf loss. With older cows, fertility losses become 65 per cent of the cost of dystocia and product loss becomes much less important.

Optimizing calf survival and welfare at birth involves breeding strategy, proper facilities, tape keeping, recognition of calving signs, and using best practices effectually and during calving time. In a previous article I calculated the potential value of reducing Ontario's stillbirth rate to an optimum two to three per cent from virtually eight per cent overall. Some Scandinavian countries have achieved the lower rate.

Could Canada attain this level? I believe we tin can, but electric current statistics show nosotros have non yet started to move in this direction. If we did lower calf losses to the Scandinavian charge per unit, the difference would be 17,500 live calves valued at more than than $4 million per yr.

This article first appeared in the Ruminations column of The Milk Producer Mag, December 2010.

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Source: http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/dairy/facts/optbirth.htm

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