Colostrum is super powerful! So why aren't we using it more?

Colostrum is hugely beneficial for dairy calves.  It provides a calorie dense, immunity forming meal that can set calves up for a lifetime of success.  However, a 2008 study found that 25% of both male and female dairy calves have failure of passive transfer, which means they did not receive adequate quantity and quality colostrum (Renaud et al 2020).  A recent article published in the Journal of Dairy Science looked at why this is happening and if benchmarking motivates producers to improve colostrum management (Wilson et al, 2023). What they found was that producers are motivated to improve their colostrum management if they see an opportunity to do so and are provided the support and information needed to make changes.  Some of the challenges identified that block change is financial, lack of labour, and lack of time.  This brings up two questions: 1) what is successful passive transfer and 2) if colostrum management needs improvement how can we accomplish it?

What is successful passive transfer?

The latest guidelines for successful passive transfer  take a gradient approach rather than a basic cut point of > 5.4% serum total protein (STP) (Table 1).  I think this makes a lot of sense and now aim for over 9.4% on Brix.

Table 1) Current guidelines for serum total protein (g/dl) and Brix (%) for successful passive transfer, based on Lomard et al, 2020.

How can we improve colostrum management and passive transfer scores?

Option 1) Feed 4L of colostrum within 4 hours of birth

Strengths: feeding 4L of colostrum within 4 hours of birth has been well established to improve rates of passive transfer, it is low cost and represents a small protocol change from 3L to 4L

Challenges:  getting the colostrum harvested within 4 hours if feeding dam to calf, limited labour during evening and nights can result in calves not getting colostrum in appointed times, cows not producing enough colostrum to feed calves, calves being unwilling to drink a full 4L resulting in the need for calves to be tube fed, which can be intimidating.

Option 2:  If colostrum volume is limited at 3L, feed colostrum by bottle.

It has been shown that calves fed 3L of colostrum by bottle have better absorption than calves fed 3L by tube feeder. *Successful passive transfer rates are still higher when feeding 4L of colostrum, regardless of bottle fed or tube fed**.

Strengths: can be implemented easily and cheaply.

Challenges: This difference disappears when feeding 4L. Getting colostrum into the calf quickly is always better than spreading the feeding of 3L over several hours if the calf will not voluntarily drink 3L.  When we break the first colostrum feeding into smaller multiple feedings we see absorption decrease dramatically and increased rates of failure of passive transfer. So this approach only works for calves that will drink 3L in one feeding within 4 hours of birth and colostrum availability is limited. 

Option 3: Check and correct cleanliness issues.

It has been shown that colostrum that is contaminated with bacteria has lower absorption. 

Strengths: This can be a low-cost area for easy improvement.  Taking a colostrum culture from the end of the nipple or tube used to feed the calves can give you a quick snapshot of the cleanliness of your colostrum collection from udder to calf.  If this is elevated, you can look back at the different steps of the collection and preparation process to find out where cleanliness can be improved.

Challenges: This is an area that needs to be constantly monitored to ensure that protocols are being followed.  Samples do need to be sent to a lab for culture or more advanced on farm culture techniques need to be followed.

Option 4: improve quality fed at first feeding by testing colostrum quality and only feeding top quality at first feeding

Strengths: Purchase of a Brix Refractometer is around 50 dollars and can be used to accurately categorize colostrum quality.  Thus, ensuring the best quality colostrum is fed to calves immediately after birth. This is most important for any excess colostrum that you are freezing to use for cows that do not produce much colostrum, why go to all the trouble for a poor-quality product.  Additionally, it can give you an opportunity to identify very good quality colostrum out of a second milking. This can be used as supplemental colostrum or if high enough quality (over 22% on Brix) as a first feeding for another calf.

Challenges This does not change the quality of colostrum you are harvesting.  It just allows you to ensure that you are giving the best.  

Option 5) Feeding transition milk:

while the traditional focus has been on the first colostrum feeding in the first 4 hours, which is the biggest bang for your buck, there can be additional absorption of colostrum within the first 24 hours and if not absorbed directly can provide local intestinal immunity and an energy boost.

Benefits: Feeding transition milk in the first week of life has been shown to improve health outcomes for calves with failure of passive transfer, improve gut development and improve recovery from diarrhea

Challenges: This can be challenging to manage to ensure that you are correctly identifying, storing, and warming the transition milk.  While there are major benefits to this it could be a labour and cost prohibitive approach.

References

Lombard, J., Urie, N, Garry, F., Godden, S., Quigley, J., Earleywine, T., McGuirk, S., Moore, D., Branan, M., Chamorro, M., Smith, G., Shivley, C., Catherman, D., Haines, D., Heinrichs, A.J., James, R., Maas, J., Sterner, K.2020. Consensus recommendations on calf and herd-level passive immunity in dairy calves in the United States.  J Dairy Sci. 103:7611-7624. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2019-17955

Renaud, D.L.,  Waalderbos, K.M., Beavers, L., Duffield T.F., Leslie K.E., Windeyer M.C. 2020. Risk factors associated with failed transfer of passive immunity in male and female dairy calves: A 2008 retrospective cross-sectional study.  J. Dairy Sci. 103-3521-3528      https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2019-17397

Wilson, D.J., Roche, S.M., Pempek, J.A., Having, G., Proudfoot, KL. Renaud, DL. 2023. How benchmarking motivates colostrum management practices on dairy farms: A realistic evaluation. J.Dairy Sci. 106.9200-9215   https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2023-23383

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Sleep, lots and lots of sleep!

On average, young calves sleep 16 hours a day and will lay down an additional 2-5 hours, meaning that calves spend between 18 and 21 hours a day laying in their “beds”.  Well this may sound like the life, it does come with some unique management challenges.  Like fawns, calves are classified as a hider species. This means the dam will guide their calves to a hidden spot after birth where they will remain lying unless they are nursing. As they get older they will start to move around more, but will still spend much of their time either sleeping or eating.   As time budget, for a young calf, sleep and food are very important.  When calves are housed away from the dam on bedding, the surface they are lying on is also very important.  Ideally, we want to house them on bedding that is clean, dry, and allows the calves to be comfortable and maintain their body temperature.  

The cleanliness of calf bedding is very important for preventing navel infections, respiratory disease, and diarrhea- the top three calf killers and money drainers.  All penning, hutch surfaces, and floor surfaces need to be well cleaned between each calf to prevent the build up of bacteria and virus in the environment.  Bugs can spread up through bedding quickly, so making sure the surface being bedded is clean.

For hutches, this means moving the hutches between calves to allow the sun to reach the surface and help disinfect it. It may also include occasionally removing the soil and gravel from the area to remove accumulated manure and bugs.   For indoor housing, using a good cleaner to reduce the bio-film on the cement and penning is essential.  On our farm, we use Bio-Solve Plus® as our detergent to clean our floors and penning.  However, regardless of what detergent you use to clean - remember soap scum!  The scourge of showers everywhere, if a soap (detergent) dries to a surface it creates a film that is hard to remove.  This is not only a problem in showers, in your barns it will protect the bacteria from the water – undoing everything you tried to do.   So, remember, lather, rinse, and repeat…. between each calf!

  Once you have a clean base for the bedding, it is important to keep the bedding dry. If you look at basic physics, what goes in must come out.  As an industry we have started to feed more biologically appropriate volumes of milk.  Moving from 10% of body weight, ( 4 L/ day) up to 20% of body weight and in some cases as much as calves are willing to drink, which could exceed 14 L /day.  This has resulted in healthier, and better growing calves, but it also means more liquid passing through the calf.  This means more bedding is needed to keep the pens dry. Drainage is important. In 2012, there was a neat research project conducted by Camiloti and colleagues that showed that calves could detect a difference between sawdust that was 90% versus 78% dry matter, and clearly preferred the dryer sawdust.  Calves almost completely avoided sawdust that had 30% dry matter.  Indicating a clear preference for dryer surfaces.   Besides just preference for their own comfort, wet bedding will leach the energy from the calves in the winter, and on any cool summer nights. Remember a newborn calf’s thermoneutral zone is between  10C (50 F) and 25C (78F), while a one-month old calf’s thermoneutral zone is between 0 C (32F) and 25C (78F).  So, what is the solution?  One solution is to ensure good drainage.  Many experts support the use of deep gravel base under calf hutches to aid in drainage.  The downside to this is that as bedding and manure get mixed into the gravel, cleanliness becomes an issue and the gravel will need to be periodically replaced.  Alternatively, there is sloped cement as an option.  This makes cleaning easier but there are limits to drainage and additional bedding will be needed. 

Whichever drainage system is used, what is important is to evaluate the bedding calves are lying on and then adjust bedding practices to ensure your calves are kept dry.  Many of you have probably heard of the knee test which involves dropping to your knees and seeing if your knees get wet.  Well, if you are like me, there are a few issues with that test.  One, I don’t wear fabric outer-wear.  When working with calves the ability to clean and disinfect pants is a great benefit so I wear rubber pants that I can wash as I have yet to meet a calf that won’t try and get poop on you.  The second problem of the knee test is that even if I did wear cloth pants I don’t want to spend the day with wet knees – also a reason for the rubber pants! For this reason, the knee test just doesn’t get done.  However, there is a simple solution.  Paper-towel.  Put the paper towel down between you and the ground and test multiple pens/multiple areas.  This way you can get the benefit of seeing if your pens are dry without spending the day with manure stains.  As a general rule, if the paper is wet after 20 seconds then you need to either add bedding or change it out.  Remember calves with diarrhea put out a lot more liquid than normal so will need to be bedded more frequently.

The final thing to think about when considering how much calves sleep is how comfortable they are.  If calves can nestle down into bedding they are better protected from wind, and cold.  By nestling they can reduce their exposed surface area and better maintain their core body temperature (see previous blog).  Remember lots of fresh, clean and dry bedding is essential, with deep bedded straw representing our current gold standard.  By giving calves lots to drink, and lots of time and space to sleep, they are well on their way to being healthy and making you wealthy and very wise!

If you wisely want to keep up to date with my blogs, you can have them sent straight to your inbox.  Just send a quick email to a.stanton@nextgendairy.com with the subject: subscribe!

If you are curious about the study of calf preferences for bedding referred to in the main text, check out "Short communication: Effects of bedding quality on the lying behavior of dairy calves" by V. Camiloti, J. A. Fregonesi , M. A. G. von Keyserlingk , and D. M. Weary  in the Journal of Dairy Science. (95 :3380–3383 http://dx.doi.org/ 10.3168/jds.2011-5187)

When you spend 75 to 85%of your time laying down..

Sometimes you have to get creative

Thinking about navels...(Part 1)

I guess I am being optimistic in this cold weather but I am starting to prepare for summer and this led to thinking about navel infections. When the weather is hot, bacteria and flies are thriving, and everyone is busy with planting, harvesting, and the million other things that have to happen on a farm- and things can slip.  However, with navel infection it is definitely true that an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. 

I was further reminded of that by a recent article by University of Guelph's Dr. Dave Renaud's recently published work in the Journal of Dairy Science on risk factors for death in veal calves.  Dr. Dave and colleagues found that calves that arrived at a veal facility with a navel infection were 2.4 times more likely to die in the first 21 days post arrival AND 1.8 times more likely to die during the remaining growing period relative to calves without navel infections.   

This was no surprise to me as when things go wrong and we have a calf with a navel infection, I know that she is in for a rough road.  Even when the infection is caught early and treated, I am likely to see that calf further down the road with respiratory disease.  This is why prevention is key.  

At birth, the umbilical cord provides direct access for bacteria into the body.  Risk factors for navel infections include cleanliness of calving area, cleanliness of calf pens,failure of passive transfer, a short umbilical cord (often a result of being delivered backwards or by c-section), and cross-sucking of navel.

So as we head into summer, it is important to remember all of these factors and keep management focused on prevention while keeping an eye out for new cases. 

Yuck!

Sorry for the nasty picture, but this is a great example of why navels must be carefully monitored - especially in the summer. 

A navel infection + flies = major problems! 

Bedding!

It's important that the first things a calf is exposed to is clean bedding and colostrum - not manure and bacteria - so lots of fresh of straw.  Even if you have to recruit some extra help!