ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Spring finally arrived and summer is already nipping at its heels. Spring is a busy time for farmers, but don’t forget about your calves! Here are 4 tips to keep your calves healthy this spring and into summer.
Spring rains leave behind wet conditions, and we all know that moisture can bring all sorts of problems with it. While we can’t stop the rain, we should be doing what we can to stop its adverse effects on dairy calves. If your calves are housed outside in hutches, or something similar, make sure you are keeping bedding dry and clean. Pay special attention if your hutches are on dirt, as extra bedding and more frequent changing of it may be necessary. Moist, dirty conditions are ideal for many bacteria, so keeping things clean and dry can help prevent disease. Likewise, if your calves are housed indoors, check for any leaks in the building as wet spots can also create a mess, and increase risk of bacterial growth around your calves.
Besides keeping calves’ bedding clean and dry, it’s important to think about keeping the equipment you use to feed them clean as well. Spring is a busy time for farmers, there’s no denying that. It can be easy to think, “I’ll just skip cleaning that today”. If you do it once, it becomes easier to do it again. Cutting corners on keeping things clean can endanger your calves, and make things a lot more difficult down the road. Pay close attention to thoroughly cleaning feeding equipment, such as bottles, buckets, nipples, and feeding tubes. If they are not cleaned, or not cleaned well, biofilm can form on them. Biofilms are home to bacteria, and once formed, they are harder to clean off, and more likely to gather additional protein onto them.
Paying attention to the needs of your calves is important and every age, and you should make sure your colostrum management is in tip-top shape as the temperatures rise. Because it’s warmer, colostrum needs to be cooled faster. As the winter months fade away, we can no longer depend on snow banks or just-above-freezing milk rooms to cool colostrum. The goal is to chill the colostrum to at least 60 degrees within 30 minutes of collection from the cow. Putting buckets or bottles of warm colostrum in the refrigerator or freezer will not cool them fast enough, and could cause bacteria growth. Either an ice bath or ice containers in the colostrum will work. Pre-chilling like this and then refrigerating or freezing does slow down the multiplication rate for bacteria. Remember, the goal is to feed clean colostrum, and warmer temps and slow cooling will hinder those efforts.
My fourth and final tip is make sure you’re feeding enough coccidiostat. Spring weather can be extremely stressful on animals, as it usually brings many weather and temperature changes. Think of those days where we experience a 20-30 degree difference in temperature in a 24-hour period. This weather stress can cause immunosuppression, meaning a bug that calves would normally have no trouble combating can become difficult for the immune system to fight off. Oftentimes, spring weather changes can lead to an outbreak of coccidiosis. The coccidiostat level that is usually fed would normally control coccidia growth, but when calves are under extra stress the coccidia can quickly grow and overwhelm the medication. If a coccidiostat isn’t already being fed with milk, consider adding it during the spring, or increasing the amount of it in spring if you already use it. Coccidiostats do not require a veterinary feed directive.
Spring, like each season, bring its own challenges when it comes to dairy farming. Make sure you are doing the best things for your calves, and follow these 4 tips to keep your calves healthy this spring and as we transition into summer. Remember, they are: keeping bedding clean and dry, keeping up with cleaning feeding equipment, ensuring colostrum is cooled quickly, and using or increasing use of a coccidiostat.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
University of Minnesota Extension is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
— Emily Wilmes, University of Minnesota Extension
For more news from Minnesota, click here.