If you want to stay ahead of calf health and catch sickness in its earliest stage, University of Minnesota Graduate Student Abbigail Prins offers a handy detection tip.
Though maternity pens can sometimes feel chaotic to manage, there are additional ways to help minimize stress and create a calmer calving environment for both cow and calf.
Beef-on-dairy numbers in the U.S. will reach up to 5 million head – roughly 15% of the cattle harvested annually – as early as 2026. The sexed-and-beef model of production will play a prominent role in the process.
Whether you’re building a new calf barn or retrofitting an existing structure, there are measures that can be taken to ensure the best possible calf comfort, welfare, and health.
Routinely monitoring transfer of passive immunity is an effective way to evaluate colostrum management and identify calves with failure of passive transfer.
A recent survey shows that the likelihood of using pain mitigation for common procedures like dehorning, disbudding and castration was directly linked to the human managers’ perception of pain for the animal.
Cryptosporidia is one of the most common scours-causing pathogens in preweaned calves, and, unfortunately, it strikes in the early weeks of life when calves are most vulnerable.
More calves born on dairies than ever before are eventually headed to feedyards these days. Performance and profitability merits sending healthy animals from the calf-rearing stage to the feedlot.
Colostrum’s myriad benefits for calves may be transferrable to an entirely different field: human health. Researchers are discovering the benefits of colostrum in both health nutrition supplements and therapeutic agents.
Solvet Lidoband is approved for use in calves under 250 pounds and in lambs under 50 pounds. The local, soothing anesthesia works for up to 42 days, helping veterinarians and producers improve animal well-being.
Mercer Vu Dairy wanted to utilize group housing and waste milk to raise their preweaned calves with round-the-clock access to milk. Here's how they came up with their own one-of-a-kind system.
The Cryptosporidium parasite is endemic to even the tidiest dairy farms, and is especially threatening to calf health. But it can be kept at bay in the calf management system with one simple and consistent approach.
Precision dairy technology isn’t just for cows. Autofeeders, activity monitors, and other emerging tools are making it possible to raise calves with the type of individual attention received by the calves of yesterday.
Ask 10 dairy producers what they believe is an effective vaccination program for calves, and you’ll likely get 10 unique answers. That’s OK, because there is no effective one-size-fits-all strategy.
Acidification of milk or milk replacer is a common practice for some calf raisers, with some studies showing it improves weight gain and fecal scores in calves.
Detecting respiratory disease in calves early – when treatment is most effective – should start by examining the head and facial features, according to veterinarian Tiago Tomazi with Merck Animal Health.
It has been well-documented that feeding preweaned calves on a higher plane of nutrition improves calf health and performance. However, providing calves more nutrients may also promote wound healing.
University of Wisconsin animal welfare researcher Sarah Adcock addresses several considerations when using caustic paste to complete disbudding, as well as some drawbacks that could be improved upon.
After a typical birth the calf should breathe within 30 seconds of delivery, says Dr. Geof Smith, dairy technical services veterinarian for Zoetis. If it isn't, you need to intervene.
Because newborn calves have very little body fat to help them stay warm, calf jackets can help them preserve energy, protect immunity and improve daily gain.
America's dairy industry has been robust the last several decades. Now, larger average dairies are producing more beef-dairy crossbred calves that are much higher quality for producing beef.
Monitoring calves’ body temperature is a critical metric to maintaining their health, and is especially valuable if temperature changes can be detected early.
While Lung Ultrasound is the cornerstone of any good Calf Herd Health Program, there are many other benefits to getting your herd vet in your calf barn on a regular basis.
Trace minerals are important to calves’ development, but these nutritional components can vary in source. It turns out some trace minerals are more palatable than others, resulting in differences in consumption.
We now know the beneficial influence of feeding transition milk to calves. Is there a way to deliver that nutritional and immunological support and bypass the tedious process of harvesting and feeding transition milk?
The sooner calves eat enough dry feed to sustain themselves, the better equipped they are to bridge the nutritional gap between the fixed liquid ration and a weaned diet of solely dry feeds.
Maternal colostrum is often considered nature’s “perfect food.” But does this “free” resource help calves achieve passive immunity as reliably as the guaranteed ingredients in a bag of colostrum replacer?
It’s important to stay abreast of new research that can influence dairy management practices. That’s what happened recently at Rosy-Lane Holsteins, Watertown, Wis.
With the cost of inflation impacting every corner of a dairy, the producer’s breeding strategy has been forced to become finetuned. More and more producers are keeping just enough replacements to fill the pipeline,.
A protocol overhaul helped the team at Singing Brook Farms, Imler, Pa., up their game in colostrum delivery. Two of their key managers share how they now seamlessly deliver high-quality colostrum to every newborn calf.
It is well-known that sub-acute ruminal acidosis (SARA) is a harmful and costly condition for adult dairy cows. But when calves get SARA, is it bad news for them, too? A Canadian researcher’s conclusion: maybe not.
Providing free choice water to newborn calves has been shown to deliver a wide array of benefits in terms of calf health and performance. But it’s also a huge challenge for some farms in the winter.
More and more farms have made the switch from feeding calves individually to group autofed systems. However, disease detection in group-housed calves remains a challenge. Could autofeeders help detect sick calves?