How to lower treatment rates during temperature swings

Western New York calf management specialist Dr. Sam Leadley shared some thoughts recently about the role of nutrition in calf health during temperature swings:

"In my personal experience nutrition seems to be a critical factor. I changed my feeding protocol from 16 ounces of powder to 30 ounces daily," he says in a recent "Calves with Sam" blog post. "Before the change I routinely treated 25 percent of the calves between birth and 2 months for pneumonia in the period from November to April. After the increase to 30 ounces of powder per day that treatment rate dropped to 5 percent."

Read more in Leadley’s If it would just get cold and stay cold blog post dated Feb. 20.

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