Strategies for Reducing Calf Losses: Eastern Canadian Veterinary Insights 

Are you struggling with calf losses? In this webinar, Eastern Canadian veterinarians discuss what is working on the ground to help prevent the most common causes of calf losses.

This webinar is available for one continuing education (CE) credit for veterinarians and registered veterinary technologists and technicians across Canada. After watching the entire webinar recording, you may take this quiz and score 80% or higher to receive a CE credit.

speakers

• Dr. Lisa Freeze, Field Veterinarian Supervisor with Government of New Brunswick
• Dr. Van Mitchell, Metzger Veterinary Services
• Dr. Lauren Wilson, Peterborough Veterinary Services

Key Messages

• Preparation before calving is critical—nutrition, body condition, vaccination timing and environmental conditions all influence calf survival.
• Cow body condition at calving matters, with thin cows at higher risk of weak calves, dystocia, poor colostrum quality and delayed milk production.
  • Even more important in extensive grazing systems where calving intervention opportunities may be limited.
• Colostrum intake is one of the most important factors impacting calf survival, disease resistance and long‑term performance.
  • Timing is everything—calves should receive adequate colostrum as soon as possible after birth, ideally within the first four hours.
• Dystocia (calving difficulty) significantly increases calf loss, not only immediately but also through higher rates of illness in surviving calves.
  • Knowing when to intervene—and when not to—is critical.
• Clean, dry and well‑bedded calving areas lower the risk of scours, navel infections and environmental exposure.
• Weather exposure is a major risk factor in both Western and Eastern Canada, particularly cold stress combined with wet or windy conditions.
  • Shelter and site selection matter, as windbreaks, terrain and bedding can dramatically reduce cold stress in newborn calves.
  • Have tools and protocols, such as warming boxes, warm water baths and colostrum supplies, on hand at all times.
• Early identification of weak or compromised calves allows for faster intervention and higher survival rates.
  • Calf VIGOR scoring helps prioritize which calves need immediate attention.
• Scours prevention starts with the cow, through vaccination and proper nutrition.
• Record‑keeping helps identify patterns of loss, allowing producers and veterinarians to target the most significant risks.

Learn More

• Calving and Calf Management (BCRC topic page)
• Calf 911 Resources (BCRC resource)

Full Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated using AI. It has been reviewed for accuracy, but occasional errors may remain. Please refer to the original webinar recording for the most accurate content. 

Kristin Thompson 

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us tonight for the third of four webinars in BCRC’s 2026 webinar series. Today, we’re going to be focused on strategies to reduce calf losses, Eastern Canadian Veterinary Insights. I’m Kristin Thompson, Knowledge Mobilization Specialist with the BCRC, and I’m going to be your moderator this evening. 

We are very happy to be able to put these webinars on through the BCRC’s knowledge mobilization work funded by the Canadian Beef Cattle Checkoff and Canada’s Beef Science Cluster. 

Before we get started, I’m going to go over a couple of housekeeping rules. You will be able to see and hear myself as well as our speakers, but we can’t see or hear you. We ask that if you do have questions, please submit them as they come up through the Q&A tab at the bottom of your screen, and we will have a Q&A session at the end of the webinar where these questions are going to be addressed live. 

This webinar is also being recorded, and we will send out the recording to everyone that registered for the webinar series in about five to seven business days. You can find recordings of all of our past webinars and other great videos on our website, BeefResearch.ca, or on our YouTube channel. 

This webinar is available for CE credits for veterinarians and registered veterinary technologists across Canada. So, if you identified yourself as a vet or RVT when you registered for the webinar, you should receive a certificate through e-mail in the next five to seven business days. But remember, you do have to stay for the entire webinar to be eligible for the credit. 

Credits are also available for past webinars, which are listed on our website. You can obtain the credit by watching the webinar recording and receiving 80% or higher on the associated quiz. For more information on CE credits, please visit BeefResearch.ca/ce-credit. This page provides details on how to receive credit for both live and recorded events and some frequently asked questions. If you have any further questions or have not received your certificate within a week of the live webinar or completion of a quiz, you can contact Dana Parker, the BCRC’s Veterinary Collaboration Specialist whose contact information is on the screen now. 

On our website, BeefResearch.ca, we have a number of different resources to assist beef producers with calving season. This includes a detailed calving and calf management topic page, which covers everything from preparing for calving, managing calving seasons, cow care before and after calving, as well as newborn calf care and management of calf hood diseases. 

The types of resources range from written articles and infographics to videos and how-to guides. 

One of our most popular resources is the Calf 911 series. This series includes videos, articles, and guides covering topics from proper tube feeding practices, colostrum management, calf resuscitation, dehydration, respiratory acidosis, and how and when to intervene with a difficult calving. We are very excited to soon be releasing a video and guide on managing hypothermia. 

To remain updated on these resources and learn about other new resources, you can subscribe to our mailing lists and I’ll pop a link into the chat shortly. 

Now, without further ado, we do have three very exciting speakers for you this evening who are ready to share their thoughts and answer your questions. So, I’m going to introduce our first speaker, Dr. Van Mitchell, and invite him to share his screen. 

Dr. Mitchell was born and raised in Utah, where he grew up working with his father on their cow-calf operation. He attended veterinary school at Mississippi State University and has been a veterinarian at Metzger Veterinary Services since 2010. He is the lead veterinarian and works at its two practices in Ontario, as well as its feedlot practice in Alberta, which now includes work in Montana. 

Dr. Mitchell’s main focus is working with stocker and feedlot operations, as well as cow-calf consulting and on-farm clinical work. 

With that, I will turn it over to you, Dr. Mitchell. 

Dr. Mitchell 

00:04:17 

Great. Thank you, Kristin. 

Hey, real nice to be here with everybody this evening. I appreciate the opportunity to run through this with everybody and look forward to hearing from Dr. Lisa and Dr. Lauren as well. 

Let’s just jump right into it. I’ll be taking the pre-calving section here. So, we’ll talk about doing some things to get set up and ready for a successful calving season. I know a bunch of you are probably well into it, maybe even over, but some things that maybe we can reflect on for the next year. 

Few things we’ll hit on is what’s an expected death loss, some causes of sickness and death, look at some risk assessment and what we can do to decrease the chances of sickness and death, and hit on some pregnant cow management and some yard strategies. 

And then hopefully some parts for, hey, I’m in the middle of calving now, what can I do? 

So, first, I just thought it’d be interesting to take a look, BCRC has a report out from some data through 2021 and 2024 on some survey for producers in Eastern Canada. And what they showed in there is the average death loss for cows is about 8% and heifers is around 11% and that’s from birth to weaning. 

So it encompasses the whole calf, the whole calf hood period there. If we break it down a little bit further and look, if we break it into mortality within the first 24 hours of life and the rest of life up until weaning, we see there on our Eastern where the red circles are, that survey shows that around 3% of our cows have a calf die within the first 24 hours of birth and heifers are a little higher at 4.4%. The mortality rate is from 24 hours old and up to weaning, our cows are just under 5% and our heifers are up close to 7%. 

So just some numbers you can take a look at and think, you know, how are you doing compared to those numbers? You know, a little above, a little below. 

We’ll break it down a little bit more. When we look into the first 24 hours there, calving difficulties, which Dr. Lisa will address with us. And then those frustrating weak-born, stillborn calves, those are our most common causes of death the first day. 

And then after that, for the rest of the time, there’s calf scours. Those are the ones that get us usually in the first 21 days or so. Dr. Lauren will address a bunch more about that. 

Calf pneumonia, those are the two most common. And then we see the joint ills, the blacklegs, you know, injuries, predators, some of those things that are a little bit more sporadic. 

So, we’ll hit a lot more on the calf scours and the respiratory. 

Out of that same BCRC report, there was one in 2017, which is the category here for past, that was 2017 numbers, and then current is 2021 to 2024. So, this shows us that if we’re looking at calf deaths, what’s taken our calves? Scours and diarrhea is sitting around a quarter of the deaths on our calves is from scours and respiratory is getting up near nearly a quarter. Between those two calves over a day old, that’s where our majority of our death rate is coming from. 

One thing I like is this little chart here. It’s from Elanco Animal Health and they have a risk assessment form for diarrhea. Now this can also be a risk assessment for pneumonia and other calving issues as well. 

And it’s got a bunch of risk factors here lined up with some points assigned to it. And we can go through and we can look and say, OK, if I have this, I’m going to add 5 points. If I have this, I’m going to add 20. And then it gives us a kind of a category of where we’re at for our calving season and after the calves are born, slight risk, moderate risk, high risk. And of course, the more points we add up, the higher the risk we are.  

We can’t hit on all of these today for time-wise, but I wanted to hit on a few of them there and help us all to evaluate some of the risks that are putting our calves at a risk for getting diarrhea and pneumonia and potentially death. The red circles there are some of the ones we’ll hit on. 

The green circles there, we don’t really have time, but I would strongly urge anybody who’s bringing in new cows, new calves, and especially foster calves to really do that with caution, because you can see there, those have some of the highest point values, because you’re bringing in bugs from the outside. So we’re going to hit on, focus on a couple of these red ones here. 

First, out of this list of troubles, you know, what can we control? Well, the calf, you know, we do have some say over what happens with him.  

Can we make our calves resistant to the pathogens and the bugs in the environment? No, but we can do a pretty good job of trying to get them as resistant as possible. You know, that would include setting up the mothers there, the pregnant cows, with vaccines and with nutrition, which we’ll hit on. 

The environment, can we control that? 

Yeah, absolutely. We can eliminate a lot of exposure to the pathogens by keeping our calving areas clean, keeping the sick animals away. We’ll hit on that here in just a minute. 

Then the pathogen itself. There’s not a lot we can do about the pathogen itself, but there’s a lot we can do about how much the calves see. This is a little snippet that would kind of come right out of a textbook that basically what it’s saying is: what we see in the sickness of the calves and the death all depends on how much pathogen they get exposed to and how resistant they are to it. 

What are these pathogens? We’re not going to hit on these here and Dr. Lauren might hit on a couple of these as she’s going through her part. But viruses, protozoans, bacteria, these are all the guys that are trying to take our calves. They’re the ones that are causing the yellow scours and the white scours and the bloody scours and bringing our calves down. They are the enemies here, and we’ll dive into a little bit more about that. 

So, for the calving, the actual calving resistance here, what can we do? 

Well, we can really affect the mother’s immunity and mineral status. Those are the two things that I wanted to focus on most right now, and by mother’s immunity, What are we talking about there? 

And that’s what can we do to get colostrum quality increased and improved? Because colostrum is huge. As Dr. Lauren will tell us about, that really means everything. And getting the immunity in and the right vitamins into that colostrum is a huge start for our calves’ lives. 

Vaccines, you know, we can’t go into detail on a lot of the pre-breeding vaccines and then our pre-calving vaccines. But just simply to say, as veterinarians, we typically really prefer going with a modified live (MLV) and doing that pre-breeding and getting these cows as healthy as we can, trying to avoid getting BVD into the group and having persistently infected calves. The best way to do that is through a modified live vaccine. And examples of that is Bovishield Gold FP, Express FP, Pyramid. 

There’s a number of those, but the live is the best that we certainly prefer. 

The pre-calving scour vaccines, getting these cows ready to have the best colostrum possible, getting our immunity up for those calves was specific to scours. The problem with those, it doesn’t cover all our pathogens. We don’t have any vaccines that are going to cover Cryptosporidium, for example, the immunity on those is pretty short. 

We’ve got to be doing that pretty close to calving, so it requires extra handling. And then what about our later-born calves? You know, our calves that are at the highest risk of scours and pneumonia typically are our last third, last half, depending on the length of your calving season. 

A lot of times, hey, it’s not a bad idea if you’re 6 or 8 weeks into calving and your calving, your scour vaccine is now 10, 12 weeks ago, to run through that last quarter that haven’t calved and hit them with it again and really boost up their immunity. 

Other things that really affect our colostrum quality is our energy and proteins, the body condition scores directly related to that on the cow, and then the mineral status. 

And we’re going to hit more on that mineral status here in just a moment. 

So going to that risk assessment chart, a couple of the ones there that have plus 10s on them that really add up is more than 30 days in the pre-calving area, poor drainage in the areas. 

And so pre-calving, you know, we don’t think of it a lot of times that the pre-calving is important to be in a clean area. But when we really consider what a dirty udder looks like and that calf’s first thing that gets on its mouth is bacteria and viruses and crypto and everything else, that pre-calving area really is important to get it clean and get these cows’ udders nice and clean. 

The calving area itself, really, really, I push heavily to say, is there any way you can calve in a different area than those cows have wintered? The winter area is where all those cattle are putting out the pathogens into the environment and then we’re going to have these brand new babies being born there. So ideally there’s a wintering area and then there’s a calving area. 

And if it’s absolutely not possible, and I realize here in the East, you know, a lot of times space is really limited and the darn snow is so deep you got, you’re really limited. 

So, cleaning out. And what does a deep clean really mean? You know, it doesn’t mean adding some straw to a two or three foot pack. It means cleaning out. It means getting it totally scraped down to the concrete, if that’s what you’ve got, or to the dirt, getting some new straw on it, you know, throwing down some stable lime, leaving it for a few days with some sunshine, really trying to get rid of that contaminated maneuver and starting fresh when it’s time to start calving. 

Couple of pictures here, to show the difference. Sometimes we don’t have control over Mother Nature, but we can certainly do our best to get those areas clean. 

Post-calving, older calves with newborns, you know, when we see scours like this around, we know that the viruses, that those older calves that have scours, they’re shedding, it’s in the billions. 

And so coming up with a strategy to either, if you’re close to grass time, calves are born, get them established a couple of days, kick them out to pasture, or you got an opportunity to move the last half of your cows or so to a new, fresh, clean area. That’s a lot of times the best way to go. 

Another one here that’s a plus 15 on that risk assessment form is a history of significant diarrhea. And why would that be a plus 15? Well, we certainly have a contaminated environment to think about. Coccidia eggs, those rascals can last for up to a year in the environment, maybe even longer. They will die in extreme heat and extreme cold. But again, what counts as a deep clean, the best thing is to just get that environment cleaned out as best as you can. 

Guys on concrete certainly are an advantage to scrape right down to the ground. And then a big one is repeating the past. That’s why it’s on here to plus 15 is you’ve had calf scours bad before. What did you learn? What did you wish when you were in the middle of that? What did you wish? Man, I wish I had done this differently. And the question is, did you do it? 

And that’s why a lot of why this is on here is we’ve been through it before. There’s probably a reason why. 

How’s the drainage? 

What’s the density? 

Are these cattle packed in too tight? 

Are we keeping those older calves with our young calves? 

A lot of these things that can really make a big difference. 

Heifers, they’re on there at a plus 20 and a plus 10. Again, it’s calved in the same area as cows, and then we got a bunch of them. 

So what’s the problem with heifers? They carry a higher load of these pathogens, the viruses, the bacteria, the protozoa, shoot, they were just babies not that long ago, so they carry a lot higher load they’re putting out into that environment through the wintering time. 

Higher likelihood of calving issues, you know, now you’re going to have a stressed calf. He’s not jumping up and getting going, getting his colostrum. We got that problem with them. Heifers generally are going to have a lesser quality colostrum and a lesser volume of colostrum. Again, that being the absolute essential to getting the calf off to the right start. 

And then they’re inexperienced mothers. Some of them are amazing, some of them aren’t so much. You know, so troubleshooting some of that. 

A big one is feeding monensin over the wintertime. That really helps us to reduce the coccidia in the environment. The next slide is going to hit on that a little bit to give you kind of something to think about. 

Calving ease on the bulls. As veterinarians, we would love to see more calving ease bulls because my goodness, we get into some pretty tight pulls. If everybody would calve out in July when the weather was nice, maybe we wouldn’t mind so much, but calving ease bulls and then not over conditioning them. 

These aren’t feedlot heifers. Just today, actually, my daughter had a heifer calf and I got her out of school and we went and pulled the calf and that one was sitting at a body condition at about eight (BCS 4.5 CDN) and I’m glad it wasn’t anymore and it was a good reminder to me to that I better practice what I preach. That heifer was getting a little bit fat. 

The most common cause of calving difficulties is too big of a calf and too small of a canal, and especially in heifers. 

Scours vaccines, for sure get two of those into them if you can at all get that into your protocol. You get six- and three-weeks pre-calving, you know, depending on the label and depending on your vet recommendations. But get two of them in. 

You know, really focus on the minerals on the heifers, which we’ll talk about here in just a minute. 

And then consider maybe just supplementing colostrum as a general rule with your heifers. 

And I know Dr. Lauren’s going to talk a lot more about colostrum. 

It’s always hard to know, do we intervene or leave those heifers alone? But sometimes it does come back to maybe we should just give them some colostrum and just help that calf out while she’s figuring things out. 

Just a quick thought here on the monensin. It’s an ionophore that it’s twofold. It helps the animal with the feed efficiency in the rumen. Everything they eat, it makes them use it more efficiently. And it’s a coccidiostat. There’s a lot of benefits to it, something to think about and consider if you don’t do it and you’re overwintering. It improves the feed efficiency for heifers and cows. You’re typically going to get more milk by feeding it. 

You’re going to get the reproduction season is going to be better if they don’t have coccidia. And then, of course, it really reduces that shedding of coccidia and is going to minimize the exposure that your calves have. 

Something to really think about and talk to your vet about, your nutritionist about if it’s something you’re not doing. It’s a real inexpensive way to really add a lot of those benefits there. 

The next one here is body condition and nutrition. It’s got it scored on here as a body condition to score of 3. 

I wish we could talk a lot more about nutrition. We could hit on a lot of things there. But really, the main thing is our body condition scoring. 

In that five, six, seven range is an ideal way (2.5-3.5 BCS CDN). 

5 (2.5 BCS CND) may be a little too skinny yet, but it’s a lot better than being at a four (2 BCS CDN) or less. 

Generally, those cows are going to be lacking a lot of nutrition and minerals, vitamins, and going to have more trouble with them. Like I mentioned, they’re the heavier they get, the tougher they are too. 

A couple of things I wanted to hit on with was actually the mineral. So we, in the eastern side here, we get a lot of winter. We don’t have a lot of grass. Things don’t last real long. 

A couple of the ones that we really see some deficiencies in is vitamin A, vitamin E, and selenium. So I just wanted to hit on a little bit about that. 

Why are they so important? 

Vitamin A, it’s big in bone development, growth, visual function, immune system regulation. And vitamin E is also heavy into the immune system. It also acts as an antioxidant to prevent from infection. 

Therefore, 2 vitamins that are directly tied to immune systems. And the vitamin E there I didn’t mention, but it’s heavily connected with selenium. So, vitamin A, vitamin E, selenium, a couple of things that we really can see quite a bit of troubles with in our eastern area that really needs some attention on our pregnant cows. 

What does a deficiency bring? 

If you read a textbook, vitamin A deficiency, it sounds terrible, and it really is if it gets low, but generally, we’re not going to see the severity of vitamin A that some of the textbooks might talk about, but in a clinical setting, out on the farm, what are we going to see? 

We have some poor immunity in the calves. We might get a calf born blind, see some night blindness, weak-born calves. We definitely have an increase in scours and an increase in mortality in our cows. 

With a deficiency in vitamin A and E, we’ll see more infections, retained placentas. So, on the farm, you might see more scours and pneumonia. You did everything management-wise you could think of, and the rascals still have scours and pneumonia. You get a handful of those frustratingly slow calves that just don’t get up and they’re not vigorous and thrifty. And then you got cows that seem to hang on to their placenta. 

Where do the calves get it? 

Colostrum. That’s why, again, colostrum is so important. There is some transplacental diffusion that they get from the mother’s blood, but it’s pretty low level. So, it really comes down to colostrum. 

We can supplement it a bit, there is a potential lag with us giving it to needles or oral, but that’s some options there to get it into them. 

The big question is, where do the cows get it? 

They get it out of fresh green forage. That’s our biggest thing. And there is none in November, December, January, February, in the months leading up to calving time. Good news is the cow’s liver can store it for a few months, but oftentimes by the time we’re calving out in May, their liver storage of vitamin A is pretty well shot. The big things with vitamin A is it breaks down quickly. 

So, we want, if we’re buying vitamins, we don’t want to buy it in March for the next summer. We want to buy it in the fall because it really does break down pretty quickly, especially in dry hay. Drought hay, overly mature hay. Last year’s hay and conditions were tough. We’re probably not going to have much, if any, vitamin A in that hay. 

Our main source for vitamin A and E is going to be in our mineral. Same with the selenium. 

One thing I’ve run across is there was this worldwide shortage in 2018 and a lot of times going forward, that vitamin A never got put back into minerals. So something to certainly look at your tags with. 

And how is it supplied? Free choice or TMR? 

TMR obviously is the best way to get it into them, but not everybody does that and that’s okay. Sometimes those TMR cattle get awful fat. Free choice, you know, is the problem there is how much are they getting? The boss cows getting a bunch and the weaker cows not so much. This is just a quick chart to show the difference in the vitamin A concentration with that really, really tall one at over 15,000 units per pound is fresh grass and everything else is way below. 

So we can see that once they’re off of grass and those liver stores are gone, we’re looking pretty poor. 

Just wanted to hit real quick, how much do my cows need? 

No need to memorize it, but that’s kind of our goal for consumption. I’m going to skip that slide and say, what do we look for in a mineral tag? Our rule of thumb are these numbers right here. 

When we look at a mineral tag, what does it really mean? Well, it tells us how much vitamin A, D, and E are in a kilogram of that mineral. And we also want to see like that top circle there of added selenium. 

Those are what we’re looking for specifically here. And how do we figure that? 

Well, if we look here, for example, vitamin A, 667,000 international units per kilogram, that’s of that supplement. 

And if the supplement tells you that it’s 100 gram feeding rate, well, then we times that by 0.1 kilograms, you’re 100 grams, and you get 66,700 international units per day. 

We look at our goal for consumption, and yes, that fits in that 60 to 100,000. 

So, we can do that, the same for each of those. 

And I just wanted to quick review that last part. Vitamin A and selenium and vitamin E, huge, huge. And we know that we’ve got to supplement it because we’ve lost it in our hay. 

High quality colostrum, we’ll hit on that a little bit later. 

And then working with your feed mill to figure out how much of that that you need. 

We’ll go ahead and I’ll wrap up my part and let Dr. Lisa take over from here and look forward to maybe some discussion in the question and answer. 

Kristin Thompson 

00:25:36,635 

Thank you, Van, for that presentation and sorry you had to rush through it. Really great information. 

And just as a reminder to the audience, if you do have questions, please enter them into the Q&A tab at the bottom of your screen, and we will answer them at the end of the webinar. 

I’m now excited to introduce our next speaker, Dr. Lisa Freeze, and invite her to share her screen as I introduce her. 

Dr. Freeze grew up on a dairy and beef farm in rural New Brunswick. She attended Nova Scotia Agricultural College and the Atlantic Veterinary College. For the past 20 years, she has worked for the Department of Agriculture in New Brunswick. Her areas of interest include calving, surgery, and neonatal calf care. 

With that, I will turn it over to you, Lisa. 

Dr. Lisa Freeze 

00:26:19,675 

Hi, everybody. I’ve been tasked with talking about the actual process of calving, and that’s a topic that I actually enjoy quite a bit. But I always think of it as more of an art than a science, maybe. 

You can read about it in the textbook. You can have me describe to you how to do things on a talk like tonight. But it’s something that you really don’t figure out on your own until you’re in the middle of things and actually getting experience with yourself. 

So, I’m going to kind of do a whirlwind trip through some different calving issues that we see. But by all means, we’ll probably have time for questions afterwards, if I kind of hit on the high spots, and there’s something that you’d like to know.  

So what we kind of think about when we think about calving is how can you prepare yourself? And so what we’d like to have on hand, either when you’re checking a cow yourself, or if you’re calling the vet maybe, a pail of clean, warm water. Warm is not a necessity, but your vet always does appreciate it, for sure. And we add a cleaning agent into it, like chlorhexidine, like iodine, like an unscented dye-free soap, all of those are fine. And those are both to wash the cow and to wash you before you go in and check the cow, because chances are you’re probably dirtier than you think. 

We also like some clean rags or some paper towel, some sort of a lubricant to help maybe get a dry calf out or to at least lubricate your arms before you go in and check. 

Rectal sleeves are a bit of a personal preference. Some people like to use them and some people don’t. So that’s kind of up to you. 

A set of clean calving chains and handles. This means that they haven’t just been hanging on a hook somewhere from last calving season and are covered in dust and fly manure. Give them a good wash before you actually use them. 

And then some people have a calving jack and some people don’t. They are really handy tools if you know how to use them but they can also do a lot of damage to the calf and the cow if you’re using them improperly. 

So they’re definitely a tool that needs to have a little bit of skill attached to them. 

And then what do you do with the cow when you’re getting ready for a calving? 

The big thing that any vet would tell you is to have your cow caught by the time the vet gets there. If I tell you that I’m not gonna be there for an hour and you don’t have the cow caught by the time I get there, I generally start charging from the minute I get there, even if I’m just helping you catch the cow. So that’s one thing to kind of keep in mind is when the vet gets there, especially during a busy calving season, we really appreciate it if you have the cow all ready for us. Now, whether you put the cow on a halter or in a chute or in a headlock kind of depends on your system. 

One word of caution I will say about chutes and headlocks is if you have either one that doesn’t open from the bottom, or maybe a chute where you can open the side, they can be a cause of concern for the cow choking if she goes down while you’re doing the calving. So if you have a headlock or a chute that only opens from the top, it might not be the best place to lock your cow in for doing a calving. 

We’ll talk about normal calving processes first. This is made-up of three main stages. 

Stage one is where the cervix starts to dilate. This starts up to 24 hours before calving. You might notice that the cow has isolated herself. She’s getting up and down. She’s acting uncomfortable. She’s walking around with her tail lifted, and eventually you might see that she passes the cervical mucus plug that’s been keeping the cervix closed while she was pregnant. 

After that, stage two begins, and that’s when the placenta begins to enter the pelvic canal to the time that she completes birth. So this is what we would consider active labor, right? She’s pushing, she’s straining, she’s trying to get that calf out. And this usually lasts for about 60 minutes for heifers and 30 minutes for cows. 

And then stage three, which we’re not going to talk about a whole lot because we’re more concentrated on the calf part, but stage three is when she would clean after calving. 

The big take-home message to knowing these stages is if either stage one or stage two is taking longer than you think it should, you should put an arm in and check that cow. So this means if she’s in stage one for more than eight hours, right, she’s uncomfortable, she’s up and down, she’s probably not straining yet or anything, but that uncomfortable portion is lasting for more than eight hours.  

If you see placenta coming out, but no calf coming. 

If the water bag is outside of the cow for more than two hours and she isn’t making any progress. 

If she’s been in active, pushing, active labor for more than half an hour and is not making any progress, you should check on her. 

Or if she takes a really long break between making progress while she’s calving, you should probably stick an arm in and check as well. 

Cows do normally take breaks while they’re calving, but they’re short ones. So, if she’s not making progress for a long time, you should check. Also, obviously, if the cow or the calf are showing any signs of distress, it’s probably time to have a closer look. 

This would be the normal presentation of a calf, right? The front legs come out first. The head is sitting on the top of the legs. You can tell that it’s coming frontwards because those toes are pointing up when you look at it from the back. And that’s how we would like all calves to come. That would be wonderful. 

Now we’ll talk a little bit about causes of calving issues. And the biggest one that we see, even despite all the progress that we’ve made in calving ease over the years, is still that the calf is too big for the cow or especially that the calf is too big for the heifer. And so a lot of that can be avoided just by choosing the right breed of bull to breed your cows to, or breed your heifers to, and choosing some calving ease bulls, right? We don’t want to breed our little dainty Angus heifers to a great big Charolais bull that’s going to throw 120 pound calves. That just doesn’t make any sense. Yes, your big Charolais cows or Simmental cows could handle those calves, but your little heifers, probably heifers of any breed, shouldn’t be breeding to that bull, right? 

The next one is that the calf is in the wrong position. And even though probably as vets, this is one that we think of more often than 5%, this one really accounts for only 5% of calvings. So by and large, if you chose something that was a calving ease, 95% of them should be calving on their own. 

The other thing to kind of take into consideration is cow factors. 

And one of them is just like Dr. Van talked about a little bit ago, those fat, lazy animals, particularly fat lazy heifers. So while this Hereford might look really nice in the show ring and you might have a feedlot heifer that’s calving, Those ones have a really hard time. They are lazy calvers. They do not do well. They do not have as much space in there, and they just have things a whole lot harder than a cow or heifer in proper body condition would. 

The other thing we see more prominently in dairy than in beef is milk fever. But as there are some dairy crosses now in the beef world, it is something that we’re seeing a little bit more in beef cattle as well. 

Then we have factors like uterine exhaustion where maybe she’s been trying all day and now she’s just absolutely exhausted. She has no energy left. She’s got no calcium left to help all those muscles contract and she’s just exhausted. 

Occasionally we also have problems where the cervix doesn’t dilate that her body’s giving all the signals that she should be calving, she’s pushing and that cervix just won’t dilate in which case typically it ends up in a c-section. 

The take home from all this is if you have more than five percent assisted calvings in your herd even including your heifers you probably need to make some changes to your program and most of those changes involve just breeding to calving these bulls to make your life and your cow’s life that much easier. 

When we’re talking about having to pull calves, and these can be ones that are in the right position or ones that you have to correct, this is typically the method that we like to do. And this would be the same whether it’s front legs that you’re pulling or back legs. You’re going to loop your chains double looped on both sides of the fetlock joint. So up above the joint and then down below the joint so that you’re spreading out pressure of your pulling over a larger space and you’re less apt to end up with a guy that looks like this. 

So when should you use a calving jack? You’ve got your calving chains hooked up properly and now when do you want to use the calving jack? 

Number one would be when the cow’s cervix is properly dilated. If she’s not entirely dilated, using a calving jack very slowly and patiently can help her dilate. Using a calving jack very aggressively and too quickly will rip the cow’s cervix and vagina. So, it’s definitely not recommended unless she’s properly dilated. 

If the calf is coming frontwards with both legs and the head in proper position, then you’re okay to jack. If the calf is coming backwards with both legs in the proper position again, then you’re okay to jack the calf out. The big thing to remember about a calving jack is it’s not a tool meant to yank the calf out. You are never just cranking and cranking and cranking to get that calf out. You are meant to use it to hold the calf at a point so that when the cow stops pushing, that calf is not being sucked back into the cow and losing ground. So generally, we only crank when the cow is pushing or shortly after in order to give her a hand. 

You’re placing the butt plate just below the vulva. You keep checking while you’re jacking to make sure that everything is still coming in the right direction. It’s not uncommon that you could start jacking the front legs and then the head suddenly twists back. You need to keep checking while you’re jacking to make sure that everything is coming in the right direction the way it should be. 

Once the head is out, we like to begin to push down on the bar. And that way you’re not pulling the calf straight out and potentially harming it. And then once the rib cage is out, you’re going to stop and reassess how things are going. Oftentimes, while the calf is kind of hanging there a little bit, you’re going to have a lot of that chunky fluid come out of its mouth and nose, and that’s not a bad thing. 

Sometimes at that point, you need to apply some extra lubricant, maybe if you had a really dry calf or something like that. 

And sometimes then we can also rotate the calf if need be to accommodate for a larger calf. 

And what do you do with a larger calf? 

So oftentimes if you are starting to do a delivery and you find a calf that has its legs crossed over in an X, that might indicate that your calf is oversized, right? Because the shoulders are squeezed together inside the cow and pushing the legs so that they cross. If you’re sticking your hand inside that cow to check and see what’s going on and you cannot fit your hand between the calf, and the cow’s pelvis, then the calf is likely too big to come out. And that means you should probably just call your veterinarian to do a C-section rather than try and get the calf out in the conventional way. 

So, when dealing with an oversized calf, you can try slow, steady pressure to try and get things to dilate if they’re not dilated enough. You can try pulling one front leg out at a time. And what that does is put the calf’s shoulders on an angle and try and move it through the pelvic canal a little bit easier than it would if it was straight crossways. And the big thing that you can run into with oversized calves is you’ve gotten past this point, you’ve finally got the shoulders out, and then a calf hip locks on you. And that means that the calf’s pelvis will not fit through the cow’s pelvis. 

So if you were to look at a cow’s pelvis, it’s going to be sort of this shaped. And then if you have a calf coming normally, it’s going to be this shaped. You can sort of see why a calf might not fit through the pelvis if it’s a great big calf. What we can do in that case is try and rotate the calf so that it’s sitting sideways. So, there’s no longer crossways like this, but it’s going to be sideways like this to maybe be more in line with the shape of the cow’s pelvis and hopefully have an easier time fitting through. Generally, the rule of thumb is if two strong people or normal gentle jacking cannot pull it out, then call the veterinarian to do a C-section. 

You should never try to pull a calf out with one of these or one of these or one of these because inevitably you will end up doing damage to the cow and to the calf, especially if it’s an oversized calf that is just not meant to come out the hole that you were pulling it out of. So you can do a lot, a lot of damage to both of your animals with any type of tools like these that aren’t necessarily meant to be used in the way you’d use it. 

Now we’ll talk about a few different presentations of calves that you might commonly see. And the first one is that the calf is backwards with both legs showing. 

So, when you first check the calf, you’re going to say, oh, the tips of those feet are pointing down. And that might be a backwards calf or it could be an upside down frontwards calf. But you’re going to work your hands up until the point where you feel the hocks and you’re going to say, oh, I can tell that’s a backwards calf rather than an upside down frontwards calf because this is a hock and not a knee. And then obviously you can work your way further and find the tail usually. But if this is the case and you have a normal backwards calf with both legs showing, you can pull the calf out by hand or by using a calving jack, either one. You can pull both legs at once. You don’t have to go alternating just like you did with the shoulders. You can pull both at once in this case. 

And the thing to keep in mind is when the calf is coming backwards, that time is of the essence, right? When a calf is in backwards, you come to a point where the calf’s hips are here at the calf’s pelvis and those umbilical vessels are getting compressed. And so the calf is coming backwards. It’s not able to breathe through its mouth yet and you’re cutting off the oxygen supply that those umbilical vessels typically provided. And so you can have a calf smother if it takes a long time to get this backwards calf out. So once you’re kind of at that point, you like to get it out as quickly as possible. 

The next one we’ll talk about is that the calf comes backwards with one or both hind legs down, and this is called a breech calf. The hard part about these ones, depending on the size of the calf and the size of the cow, is that you have to push the calf back in in order to manipulate the legs to come up. Sometimes if you were to call a veterinarian to help you with this, they will give the cow an epidural to make this easier so that she’s not pushing against you. And the big thing is you do have to be careful in not puncturing the uterus here when you were bringing those legs up, right? Sometimes, especially if the cow was pushing, you got a lot of force pushing these hooves this way, and they can actually puncture out through the uterus while you’re trying to get the calf out. 

The next scenario we’ll look at is that the calf is frontwards with both one or both front legs down, and this ends up being the same thing. You have to manipulate the calf’s legs to bring them up being careful not to tear the uterus again. Again, a lot of times this requires pushing the calf back into the cow and can be made easier with an epidural. Unfortunately, these are often ones that we see on cows that calve out in pasture for some reason and you will have a dead and swollen calf hanging out of the cow and a million flies around and they’re a real pleasure to deal with and they sometimes require cutting the dead calf’s head off to push the body back in to inevitably get the rest of the body out. Not very pleasant. 

And the last, the fourth scenario is that the calf is frontwards with the head back. And these ones are often the most difficult to resolve. It does help if you are seven feet tall with really long, slender arms. But since most of us are not, we have to find ways to kind of deal with these in other methods. So you can use the arm on the opposite side of the way the head is bent. If you looked at this calf and its head is bent to the right, then you’re going to use your left arm to try and reach it. You can use a calving snare if you have it and if you can actually reach and get it around the head. Sometimes these ones, their heads are just so far back and their shoulders are lodged in the pelvis that they require a cesarean section and they just do not come out very well. The other hard thing about these calves is that many of the ones that are in this position are already very weak or may already be dead before you ever start doing the calving. So they can be a lot of hard work for little rewards sometimes. 

And the last one we’ll talk about briefly is just that the calf can be upside down and this can be frontwards or backwards. Sometimes some people can manually turn them right side up inside the cow. If you have a vet do this, they might use a detorsion bar to do it. And sometimes even that way, depending on how tight a fit the cow is and the calf is inside the cow, they might require a cesarean section to come out to. 

The last one I’ll touch on a little bit is uterine torsions. And these ones are tricky. A lot of people may have trouble with these or may kind of miss these and end up with a dead calf because They weren’t even sure that the cow was calving. So the hard part about them is there’s no real, you know, for sure reason why the cow’s uterus might twist. Some people think that she might have had a sudden fall. I do think there’s a bit of a correlation between hoof trimming and a tilt shoot, maybe during late pregnancy, and sometimes that can cause a uterine twist. Sometimes the calf could be very active, and a lot of times there’s no known reason at all. It’s just sort of a flaw in the design, right? The uterus isn’t really anchored to anything in there. So anything that kind of sends the calf for a loop also sends the uterus for a loop and twists it off. The hard part is that as the uterus twists, it also twists off some of the blood vessels that carry all of the oxygen and take away all of the metabolites from the uterus. So you’re going to have decreased circulation that can lead to the dead calf. You’re going to have decreased circulation that can lead to dead uterine tissue. And you can also have toxins build up inside the uterus so that when you do untwisted, they all flood back into the cow system and cause some problems that way. 

So how do you know if a cow has a uterine torsion? 

She’s showing all the signs of being ready to calve, but nothing is happening. There’s often minimal discharge, the water bag doesn’t come out, often the water doesn’t break. She’s not really pushing, but she’s been acting like she’s going to calve, right? She’s in that stage one labor where she’s acting uncomfortable. She’s not pushing, but there’s definitely something going on. So if you were to stick your hand into a cow, if she had a uterine torsion, the vaginal exam would be in order to reach the calf or in order to reach the cervix, you’re going to have to twist your hand and your arm around in order to reach the cervix. So normally, you would be going straight in. And when there’s a torsion, you’re either going to have to twist your arm around to the right or to the left, depending on which way the torsion is. 

On a rectal exam or on a vaginal exam, you can also feel this really tight band of tissue that’s going to go either to the left or to the right. And if it’s going to the left, that typically tells you that the torsion is going in a clockwise direction. And if it’s going to the right, then that usually tells you that the torsion is going in a counterclockwise direction. And it’s important to know which way they’re going because that’s how you fix it, is to untwist the uterus in the opposite direction. Sometimes that means rolling the cow very quickly. Some people will also use a plank to help them out with this. If you do not know which way that the uterus is twisted, you can obviously make this worse if you’re rolling the cow the wrong way. And it does not always work, right? 

If you have a really tight torsion, sometimes, no matter how many times you roll the cow, it really just does not work. The other disadvantage of it is, is that it sometimes does require a number of people, especially if you have a sort of a big hateful type cow. It really takes a number of people to kind of get her maneuvered around the yard or the pen to get rolled. If you call a veterinarian to help you with the torsion and they can reach the legs of the calf, oftentimes they’ll use a detorsion bar to help twist the calf around and twist the uterus with it. The big risk with this is there’s also a risk of breaking the calf’s legs, right? If you are trying to move something that weighs 100 pounds in a small space and do it by torquing around its front legs or its back legs, then there’s a risk of breaking them. And so that’s just one possibility that comes along with that. 

The other thing to note is even once you correct the uterine torsion, oftentimes the cervix is not completely dilated after rolling the cow or by using the detorsion bar. So you need to take your time getting the calf the rest of the way out. And sometimes the torsion is so tight that you cannot reach the calf’s feet at all. In which case, if rolling does not work, then you are definitely stuck with a C-section in order to get that calf out. 

So once you’ve gone through any of those calving difficulties, how do you know that your calf has had a rough calving? So sometimes it will be gasping for breath. It can be really dopey and act sort of comatose. It can be stained with meconium, which is all this manure that this calf has passed in the birthing process, which lets you know that it’s gone through a fair amount of stress because that shouldn’t normally happen. 

A calf with a swollen head or tongue oftentimes means that it’s been in the calving process for quite a while, or any calf that doesn’t stand within about half an hour or so should be considered that it’s had a rough time. 

Sort of the milestones for a normal calf should be that it should breathe within 30 seconds, lift its head within three minutes, sit up within five minutes, and stand within half an hour, if not sooner.  

If your calf is slow to breathe or having trouble breathing, what can you do to help it? So you can give it a really good rub down with a rag or some straw or whatever you’ve got handy. You can take that straw and poke the nasal septum, which is the middle of the nose in between the two nostrils. You can put a small amount of cold water in the calf’s ear to kind of revive it a little bit. And then you can put it in the recovery position, which is this. So you’re going to sit the calf on its sternum, which is right on its belly. You’re going to pull the front legs forward. You’re going to put the back legs forward. And basically what that’s doing is taking as much pressure as possible from the other organs away from the lungs and letting them inflate to their maximum capacity and help that calf breathe a little bit easier. 

And historically, a lot of people did and probably still do hang the calf upside down. And initially, while this might help get some fluids outside of the lungs, what you’re actually doing is putting all of the weight from all of the organs directly right on the calf’s lungs. So as long as it’s hanging down, it’s not going to have a very easy time to inflate those lungs. So you’re much better off to put it in a recovery position like this and get it some help to breathe that way.  

And once you’ve got it in the recovery position, there’s this really good chart on the BCRC website that tells you when you should intervene with a calf. And so you can go through this scoring system. I don’t have a whole lot of time to go through the whole thing, but it’s all on the BCRC website if you want to have a look at it. And basically, it’s telling you when you should intervene with some colostrum, when your calf might have some respiratory acidosis from too much carbon dioxide in its system, and maybe you need to supplement oxygen. 

And also when you should provide pain management. I personally think that any calf that is pulled or jacked probably should have some sort of pain management, and that could be any of those medications listed. As long as your calf is painful, it’s not going to be as apt to get up and want a nurse, right? So, if you had a hard jack, especially, then you can provide a little bit of pain relief for your calf and help it quite a bit. 

And that’s all I have. 

Kristin Thompson 

00:54:21 

Wonderful. Thank you for that presentation, Lisa. That was very insightful and very informative. 

I am now very excited to introduce our last speaker, who’s Dr. Lauren Wilson, and invite her to share her screen while I introduce her. 

Dr. Wilson graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in 2015 and has worked at Peterborough Veterinary Services for the past 10 years. The clinic is a mixed practice, treating all agricultural species. The clinic’s beef clientele is mostly cow-calf, with some veal backgrounding in feedlot clients. She was raised on a farm 30-minutes west of Peterborough with a cow-calf and feedlot operation, as well as pigs, farrows to finish. 

I will hand it over to you, Lauren. 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

00:55:05 

Great. 

Thanks, Kristin. 

Okay, let me share this. Okay, guys. 

So, we’re going to jump right into reducing calf mortality post calving. And I think that both Van and Lisa set us up really well for this. 

Okay, so this is a pretty big topic. I wanted to just narrow it down to three things because we don’t have a lot of time. 

And my top three things are going to be failure or passive transfer, and as Van said earlier, diarrhea and pneumonia. 

What is failure of passive transfer? Van said before, ultimately, calves are not going to get antibodies from the placenta. It’s all coming from the colostrum. So, it’s absorbed across the gut lining in neonates. And failure of passive transfer is characterized as less than 200 grams of IgG absorbed by that calf.  

And it might happen for a number of reasons. Maybe the calf missed its window of opportunity, maybe the colostrum quality was poor, maybe colostrum was not present, like a cow that got cross suckled. 

The dam didn’t let the calf nurse. Maybe the calf was hypothermic. So ultimately, you have a pretty short window. It’s only 24 hours to get colostrum into these calves. And by, you know, 12 hours in, we’ve lost 50% of that ability. Total gut closure at 24 hours. 

New research is showing that if calves are not up and nursing by four hours, they are at an increased risk for failure of passive transfer and for mortality. And our risk factors, I really want you guys to focus on because it’s going to come back again and again so you can identify them, is calves born from dystocia or difficult calving, calves with a weak suckle reflex. 

And those are kind of your dummy calves, like Van said, calves that maybe didn’t get enough vitamin A and E or selenium, and they have a weak suckle. Twins notoriously are set up to get failure or passive transfer. Calves born to heifers, again, because they are poor mothers and also have poor colostrum quality. And then you can’t forget calves born to dams that have large udders or teats, and maybe the calves can’t get on. 

So, then you want to think, okay, I’ve identified my risk factors and I’m going to supplement my calves. But ultimately, the first thing is you need to get this calf up in nursing. Let’s say it’s not up in nursing by four hours and you have a cow that is mature and has good colostrum quality and you can work with her, get that calf up and get it on the cow nursing because that’s going to be your gold standard. 

But maybe you also had a difficult calving, like Lisa said, giving pain control or pain management both to the cow and the calf is going to be pretty important because it’s going to help the cow with milk letdown and it’s also going to give the calf pain management, so it gets up in nursing quicker. Colostrum supplement is going to be your next thing. So the calf’s not up, it’s not sucking, you can’t work with a cow, then ultimately you are going to be choosing a colostrum supplement. 

And there are many options out there that are great, and they all have their own advantages. The thing I want to point out, I just have four here, is these all have different levels or amounts of IgG in them. So top left has 200 grams of IgG, and then the MU50 has 50 grams of IgG. Imu start 120, 120 grams, and then the calf’s choice is 100 grams. 

So it’s really important to identify how much IgG is in each bag so you can actually see or know what you’re giving your calf. And then I think the other thing to consider is, and a big mistake that is often made is okay, I’m just going to get this calf colostrum, but you only give it one bag. And even if I was to give this 200 IgG bag a colostrum, sometimes that isn’t enough, even though that’s the minimum I’ve set for saying that that’s going to allow for passive transfer, you have to remember we’re tubing this in usually. 

If you can bottle feed it, that’s great because the suckle is going to put the colostrum where it needs to be, but if we tube it in, it’s going to go and instead of straight to the abomasum of the stomach, it’s going to go to the four stomachs. And it’s going to sit there and have a delayed movement through until it gets to intestines where it will be absorbed, which means that you’re going to have time for those antibodies to maybe not be as effective or have broken down. 

So, you’re not going to get necessarily 200 grams of IgG absorbed from that one package. You’re probably going to need more than one. 

Okay, so we’ve covered our risk factors and we’ve covered, you know, how much colostrum we need to give. But what does failure of passive transfer actually look like in these calves? 

I would say mostly we talk about it as like a neonatal issue. It’s our young calves and we often diagnose it in calves that are seven days and under by taking a blood sample and testing the serum total protein, our cutoff for that is 5.5 grams per deciliter, and ultimately you can’t really do that test in calves accurately once they’re over seven days of age. And those calves tend to present with like out of nowhere fever, lethargy, diarrhea. They might have a navel infection, multiple swollen joints. They might just be flat and unresponsive, no signs of diarrhea. But when you check their gums, they have this purple line across the gum line where it meets the tooth, and that’s your toxic line. 

But what I want people to start thinking about is passive transfer, failure of passive transfer doesn’t stop at the neonate stage. There has been many studies showing that both morbidity or sickness and mortality is increased and can affect calves up to six months of age if they have failure of passive transfer. And I think the other interesting thing to think about is I have said our cutoff is 5.5 for the serum total protein. 

But many of these studies are actually looking at values higher than 5.5. We have 6.3, 5.8, we have 6.1, 5.6. So maybe we have to change the way we’re looking at what passive transfer is for our cutoff. And just it means ultimately we need to be doing better for colostrum uptake. 

Okay, so my takeaways for passive transfer ultimately are going to be that it will affect calf mortality up to six months of age, probably longer. It’s just that’s what we have studies on. 

In order to prevent this, we need to get calves up in nursing by four hours of age. In order to supplement them, we need to do at least 200 grams of IgG antibody. Probably more. And then in order to prevent, we really have to focus in on our high-risk calves. So, if you have heifers, maybe part of your protocol is you go in and you tube colostrum. 

If you are watching and you have kind of these unresponsive or weak, slow-to-stand calves, those are the calves that I would be going in and tubing colostrum. Dystocia, swollen head calves, and twins are a huge high risk calves that we should be really considering supplementing. And sometimes you, if you can, wait around for that four hour mark and wait for the calf up and see if it’s nursing aggressively. That’s amazing. 

A lot of my clients don’t have that opportunity. They, you know, calve out the cow, they have to go to work. So, my advice to them is, if you’re not there to monitor, then you should consider supplementing colostrum. 

Okay, so next we’re going to move on to diarrhea and pneumonia, but I wanted to take kind of a dive into calving this time of the year because a lot of people are in it right now and the cons and the pros of doing it. 

So, we have extremely unpredictable weather right now, extremely stressful on both calves and cattle. We also have increased stocking density because they’re all calving in the yard and we have smaller areas for them to be in. It’s messy. We have increased runoff and it’s going to start raining soon. So it is difficult to keep them clean. But as Van mentioned, we have the opportunity to control the environment with good bedding. 

The pros of calving right now is we can control calving because we can identify when they’re having problems and we can assist them sooner. We can control and monitor colostrum uptake, which is going to reduce the amount of failure of passive transfer that we see. It’s easier to process the calves and also tend to the sick ones as well. So all of this is to say, yes, we’re going to have increased risk of disease due to increased stock intensity and weather stress now, but we can take advantage of having our cattle right here in close quarters so that we can really focus on colostrum uptake so we reduce disease. 

Okay, so jumping into the calf diarrhea, which Van had said, you know, was coming up to 25% of the cause of mortality in these guys, there are basically five pathogens that are causing diarrhea in these calves. And I’ve listed them here broken down by age of affected. 

So if you have calves that are scouring under five days of age, it is E. coli. Five days and up, you have coronavirus, rotavirus, crypto, and then once they’re over three weeks, you add in coccidiosis. And it’s not necessary for you to memorize this, but it is necessary for you to identify the age range at which these calves are getting sick so that you can talk to your vet and sort out what plan you’re going to make and what’s actually going on and how to treat. 

And then I think the important thing too is to focus in on these pathogens are fecal oral, meaning the calves are getting feces through their mouth and getting infected that way. The cows are carrying around the pathogens and calves that are born in wet pens and areas are at higher risk for contracting diarrhea. 

My biggest prevention for this is to increase bedding in calving pens and controlling the environment. If you can increase the calving pens bedding, increase bedding in the calf shelters, then you’re going to do a big service for these calves and reduce contamination. Other ways to prevent against CAP diarrhea are going to be oral antibody supplements. I use that because it’s commonly known, but there are other products out there that work well. So definitely worth looking into, and they will typically protect against E.coli, coronavirus, sometimes rotavirus as well. 

And then neonatal oral vaccines such as Calf Guard, but there’s also intranasal vaccines for diarrhea now too. So interesting, those are mainly against corona and rotavirus. And then isolating scouring calves is something that maybe we need to focus in on more so we reduce the spread and reduce the contamination. 

And in an outbreak situation, I often suggest, you know, things are out of control, we still have 50% of the cows to calve, then maybe we, if we have the area, we should move calving to a different area that’s not contaminated yet so we can set those new calves that haven’t arrived yet up for success. 

So, treatment of diarrhea, I’m going to just run through quickly. Are antibiotics always needed? No. 

If you have E.coli diarrhea, yes, of course we need to treat that with antibiotics. But the other sources of diarrhea, once we get over 5 days of age, are viral and parasitic. So we’re not always going to reach for an antibiotic. There are definitely times where you have excessive bloody diarrhea might need an antibiotic, you have a calf that’s down and not nursing, it’s lethargic, then you’re going to definitely have an overgrowth of intestinal bacteria. So you might need an antibiotic. But that’s something that is a little bit tougher to tease out. 

On the flip side of that, when is pain management needed? And I would say if your calf is scouring, but it is up and nursing, I would reach for a pain management like Medicam or Banamine faster than I’ve reached for an antibiotic because it’s going to improve their recovery. It’s going to keep them nursing and help them move through illness, reduce their fever so that they keep drinking and they get better. 

One thing that I do think a lot of producers forget about is oral electrolytes. Because if a calf is still nursing, and it is a beef calf, they are not going to drink from a bottle, and they are tough to catch. And it is slightly inconvenient to give them oral electrolytes. 

But the reality is…Oral electrolytes are replenishing more than just fluid. They’re replenishing sodium, which we cannot, once they start scouring, they’re not going to get enough sodium from the milk, but they’re also correcting a base deficit. These calves tend to get an acidosis or a metabolic acidosis, which you’ve seen these calves before, even if you know you haven’t, because they’re fine in nursing at one in the morning and you go out at night check and they’re down and despondent, they’re not nursing, and you don’t know what happened. They just crash and burn. You can help avoid that by giving oral electrolytes. So it’s super, super important. 

And then of course, if they’re nursing, I would do that like morning and night so that they’re still nursing, but they’re getting that electrolyte replacement. If they’re not nursing and you’re managing at home, then I would go ahead and do alternating electrolyte milk feedings. So they’re still getting the calories from milk. My takeaways for calf diarrhea is control your environment, increase bedding, keep the calves clean and dry, and improve colostrum management. 

And I’m going to keep coming back to this and you’re going to get sick of me hearing it. It is super important to improve colostrum management and consumption. Things that will help you is identifying what age is affected and acting quickly. If you’re seeing scouring, but the calf’s not that thick, jump on it. Because likely by the next day, they’re going to be even sicker. Don’t forget about oral electrolytes and how important they are. They’re not just to replenish fluids. 

And prevention now, if you’re having trouble, we should really be focusing on the calves that are coming. When they hit the ground, they should be getting an antibody supplement and/or an oral or intranasal vaccine. And then, just like Van said, if you’re in it right now, start making notes for next year and what you’re going to do to prevent it on the cow side. 

Okay, so jumping in an ammonia. Ultimately, I just want to show what our causes of pneumonia are. It’s a pretty long list. There’s a lot of viruses, there’s a lot of bacteria, and everybody knows the clinical symptoms of it. It can affect everybody, all ages. 

Usually it’s a fever, puffing, nasal discharge, coughing, lethargic, not nursing. And my biggest point, honestly, is that pneumonia is multifactorial. 

It’ll start as a virus often, but usually a bacteria moves in too and makes it quite severe. So, prevention for pneumonia is going to be good colostrum uptake at birth because the dam is going to have some antibodies against these things. And so if we focus on good colostrum uptake, then our calves will have antibodies against these viruses and bacteria. And then dry pens and bedding, controlling our environment is going to be really important. But on top of that, that’s not just bedding, it’s going to be air quality. So in my opinion, cold, dry air, as long as we have deep bedding and good shelter, is better than warm, wet air. Because if you go into a barn that’s all closed off, it’s warm, it’s wet, and immediately it hits you in the face with ammonia. So if you’re in there for half an hour, you’re throwing starting to feel a little sore, maybe your eyes are a bit teary, the calves feel that too. And it’s going to set them up to get pneumonia. 

So good air quality, good air flow, higher ceilings. If you’re outside, you want good wind blocks with roofed areas so it keeps them out of the rain. And of course, remember that our highest times for pneumonia are spring and fall, and our prevention against them is vaccines. And the biggest thing I want you to know, honestly, about the vaccines is there are two camps. 

So we have an intranasal vaccine, or we have systemic injectable vaccines. And both have been around for a while, but I do think that the intranasal vaccines are making a big push in the last couple of years. They’re kind of neat for a few reasons. 

They’re safe, safe in neonates, so you can give them when they’re born, they’re safe in pregnant cattle, safe in nursing cattle, and they respond extremely quickly. So they have a two-fold action mode, innate immunity that responds within 24 hours, and then an adaptive immunity that responds within about two weeks. So if you have an outbreak, you can use this vaccine and immediately start seeing a response from it and protection from it. 

The disadvantage of it is it does not last long, so maybe three months of protection and then you’re kind of out, but it is enough to get you through the spring and the fall. The flip side of that is your injectable systemic vaccines, killed versus live vaccines. I’m not really going to get into that, although I agree with Van, we would prefer a live vaccine. Ultimately, these vaccines are activating A systemic immune response. 

It takes three to four weeks for a live vaccine to activate an immune response that’s going to work, and about 6 to 8 weeks for a killed vaccine because you have to booster it for that full response in calves or animals that haven’t seen that vaccine before. On the flip side, though, it will last for up to 12 months. The problem with this type of vaccine in calves specifically is you’re not going to get a great response if the calf is under eight weeks of age. So usually we would not use systemic injectable vaccines in neonates and tend more towards intranasal for prevention. 

Reducing calf mortality post calving all key points. I really like my big take home message, honestly, is improve colostrum consumption to set your calves up to succeed. And then secondary to that, control your environment. So deep bedding, clean bedding, clean dry pens. If you go into a pen and you kneel down where the calves are laying and you get back up and you’re dry, you’re doing a good job. If you kneel down and you get back up and you’re wet, they need more bedding. And that’s really going to reduce pneumonia, diarrhea, but also things like navel ill and joint ill. 

And then don’t forget about how important vaccines and antibody supplements are. Definitely they help prevent and set you up for success. But if you start to have problems, they’re going to be really useful if you identify that problem early in helping protect the rest of the calves as they start coming. 

And then finally, I just have a little decision tree that I kind of put together to think about your calves as they’re hitting the ground and whether or not you’re going to supplement them. So, you know, it was born and you’re identifying if it’s a high-risk calf. So that’s going to be calves that were dystocia, calves that have a weak suckle or are dummy calves. They haven’t stood up, you know, within that 30 minutes that Lisa said they should be. They’re twins. Maybe they came from a heifer. Maybe the cow has a big bag and you need to get them on it. 

So if that’s the case, then you’re thinking about supplementing colostrum. And I don’t necessarily mean you 100% have to go to tubing. You can get that calf up and get it on the cow as long as the cow is willing to work with you. But you know, if it’s a heifer, you are going to know she has a poor colostrum. So maybe we should be tubing or bottle feeding colostrum supplements into that calf. 

And then if it was a difficult calving, we should really be considering pain management for our cow and calf. So then you come over to four hours old, is that calf up and nursing? If it’s not, we should be tubing and supplementing colostrum. 

And then every, so now we’re at 8 hours old, is it nursing the cow? Yes or no. 

Supplement more colostrum if it’s not. And every four hours, you should be doing that until it’s 24 hours old so that you give it the best advantage to absorb antibodies. Because when we’re tubing, we have a delayed output or movement of that colostrum through the foreguts into the intestines. 

So we’re going to have a delayed movement, but also a reduced ability to absorb antibodies on top of that. And that is it. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:19:23 

Thank you, Lauren. And thank you, Van and Lisa, for your presentations as well. 

We’re going to go straight into the Q&A session. So if you’re all able to turn on your audio and video for our speakers, we will begin answering some questions. And we have seen some questions come through, so I’ll go start going through the questions. 

The first one is for you, Dr. Wilson. 

So they’re asking if you– or maybe you can understand the question better than me. 200 IgGs from two bags of 100 IgG in the first feeding in the same bottle within four hours or more, two feedings in first four hours for a total of 200. 

Dr. Laruen Wilson 

01:20:16 

I’m not sure if they’re asking if they could combine two bags into one feeding. Which honestly, I don’t think I would recommend. 

If you only have a colostrum that has 100 grams of IgG, then give that and 4 hours later, if it’s still not nursing or you know it’s a heifer and you really just want to supplement it, whatever, it’s got a swollen head, do another bag. There is a problem with us fiddling around with the formulas or hyper concentrating milk. It will cause definitely delayed emptying, but also it can cause diarrhea because it’s going to have a hyper tonic like caloric intake. 

So you’re going to have an osmolality pull of water into the intestines. So it’s just better to make it up the way it tells you to and give it the way it tells you to if you’re really wanting a higher concentration of IGG, outsource a product that has that. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:21:14 

Thank you for that. 

The next question is, can you mix electrolytes with milk? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:21:23,185 

Okay, so no. The general answer is no. There are these new electrolytes, and I can’t remember the name of them, but there are specific electrolytes made that you can add to milk. Now it would be whole milk. 

I can’t remember if it’s also milk replacer, but like whole milk from the cow and they’re effective. The problem again, and it’s the same as, you know, doubling up on your colostrum bags, is if you start adding electrolytes to the milk and they’re not formulated for that, you’re going to have this imbalance of osmolality and you’re going to cause diarrhea on top of the diarrhea. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:22:07 

Thank you. 

The next question is whether there is a vaccine for crypto. 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:22:18 

No, there is not. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:22:30 

The next question is, if intranasal vaccines only last up to three months, how soon should those calves be revaccinated and with a second intranasal or an injectable? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:22:34,864 

So they really do. I mean, all the intranasal labels will be a little bit different, but in general, it’s up to three months. 

So if you have a particularly high risk period or group of animals, I would be repeating your intranasal close to that three months time. Or maybe if you have, you’ve set them up, you know, they’ve got good colostrum intake, they’re happy they’re on cow side, maybe it’s the summer and they’re on pasture or whatever, then I would be doing, and they’re over eight weeks old because it’s been three months, then you can move in with your systemic vaccine. 

And you’re definitely going to get a more lasting immunity with a systemic vaccine and injectable vaccine. 

So that’s typically, like most of the time, I don’t just use intranasal vaccines. We use them kind of in conjunction with one another so that they’re kind of synergistic. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:23:34 

Perfect. Thank you for that. 

I’ve got a question for Lisa. You had talked about the use of calving chains. We do get some questions on whether ropes or straps are a good option versus chains. I wonder if you could comment on that. 

Dr. Lisa Freeze 

01:23:54 

Yeah, ropes or straps are also fine. Maybe a little bit harder to keep clean unless you’re really giving them a good wash and a good dry in between calvings. But as long as you’re wrapping around in the same method, that’s fine. And as long as you’re not using like really thin rope that’s going to kind of dig into the skin as you’re pulling, then that’s absolutely fine. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:24:16 

Perfect. Thank you. And I just have a question for Van. 

You had mentioned on the vaccines, and then you also mentioned, Lauren, as well, on recommending modified live vaccines. I’m wondering if you’d be able, or both of you would be able to comment as to why the recommendation for modified live versus other vaccines. 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:24:39 

Sure. Actually, on the end of my slideshow there, do you mind if I just share my screen really fast to make that visual? On the end of my slideshow, I have a quick visual for that. 

Granted this, let me pull it up right here. Granted, this is my homemade rendition as the reason to why. 

If we look at killed versus modified live, if we look at a level of immunity and how long it goes, if we compare a modified to a killed, we don’t get quite as high of a level of immunity with a killed. And it doesn’t last near as long. And you got to boost it to get it to do that. 

This little next slide here is looking where we have a BVD risk usually between that one and four months time. And if we vaccinate a cow when she’s open, her immunity spikes up and then it takes a year to decline. And when that risk is at its highest, our immunity is also at its highest. 

And if we look at, if we compare that to say a killed vaccine at preg-checking, If we give them that vaccine here at six months, the immunity jumps up and it goes down over the next six months or so. 

The problem is then they get, then they’re open, then they get bred, and their highest risk is not covered by this vaccine anymore. And so ideally we’re going to be in this curve right here where our immunity covers that BVD. 

So that’s a big reason for me why, and especially pre-breeding as well. We want to get that into them so that it’s at its highest peak during that highest risk. And then it lasts the longest for a full year. But if you’re going to be given it as a pregnant cow, you got to be real, real careful to make sure that those cattle are set up for that, that they’ve been vaccinated a couple of times with that correct vaccine before before you give it when they’re they’re pregnant. 

Hopefully that answered your question. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:26:50 

Yeah, no, that was perfect. Thank you. 

Next question is what is the current treatment protocol for crypto? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:27:07 

Yeah, so crypto is challenging for sure because it’s a protozoa, you kind of have to just let it run its course. They get extremely watery diarrhea and it also is contagious to you. 

So just having really good hygiene is super important so that you don’t give it to yourself or anybody else standing in the calves and then trying to isolate those calves so that you’re not spreading it around. If you’re having a really big outbreak and you want to do something to prevent, there are medications you can use. 

And basically the problem with it in a beef setting is that you have to give it from birth once a day for seven days. It’s really not practical. So the best thing that you can do is try to control spread and then be really aggressive with your fluid therapy for the sick ones. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:27:59 

Thank you. 

Can you use Gatorade if you have nothing else at the time for an electrolyte source? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:28:08 

Yeah, yes. 

I guess the short answer is yes, you can. It’s certainly going to provide a bit of glucose and some sodium, but it’s going to, the problem with electrolytes formulated for humans is they are not focusing in on a calf’s needs. And when humans get sick with diarrhea. 

Of course, they need sodium, and so do calves, but they don’t get metabolic acidosis, and calves do. Almost always get metabolic acidosis. So, if you look at our calf electrolytes, the really good ones are going to have things in them like acetate or propionate that are bases that are going to fulfill our base deficit. 

So not only, like those two also help facilitate sodium moving from the gut into the calf, but they will correct the acidosis. So you really should be looking for a calf-specific electrolyte that has some type of base. 

Bicarbonate is another one, but the better ones are propionate and acetate. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:29:19,663 

Thank you for that. So the next question is: 

We moved our herd 450 miles and had a pneumonia outbreak. It was awfully bad. Almost all calves were treated and they lost some. Did we create an environment where the bacterial strains were effectively, weren’t effectively covered by the mom’s colostrum? They never had pneumonia in young calves. There was stress with weaning and an unexpected huge temperature drop started it. 

Wondering if you could comment on that, Van. 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:29:51 

Sure, yeah. So, with bovine respiratory disease, stress is the number one factor in getting it kicked off. That’s why these high-stress sales barn calves are our highest risk when we’re going into feedlots. 

And so for sure, the movement to a new environment, a new place, getting banged around on the trailers, finding mom when you’re off the trailer, and all the stress that goes with it, that’s definitely the inciting cause to pneumonia in the majority of cases you know, maybe not directly related to the colostrum. 

And it depends on how old the calves are. You know, colostrum only lasts so long. And if the calves, you know, say it’s three months out, the colostrum use is pretty well depleted. And if the vaccines, if we haven’t done a vaccine program yet in the babies, if they didn’t get their intranasal or an injectable, then there really wouldn’t be a whole lot of immunity to it. 

And then a lot of our vaccines don’t cover Mannheimi or Pasteurella, two of the main respiratory bacterial pathogens so yeah that you know that certainly fits the common trait in a stressful event and then you throw that crazy weather into it that’s pretty well asking for some troubles so you know it’s maybe not directly related to the colostrum there. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:31:08 

Thank you. 

The next question is, is there a risk of abortion to cows when using a live vaccine? 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:31:36 

I can go ahead there, I guess, if we to just finish up what I was saying there. Yes, absolutely. 

Using a modified live vaccine and a pregnant cow who has not been properly set up and properly set up typically is 2 vaccines pre-breeding. You know, when she was a young calf and then again a month before pre-breeding if given two modified lives, she should be good to go. 

But truthfully, you really shouldn’t need to vaccinate a pregnant cow if she was given that modified life pre-breeding. That’s one of the highlights of doing it then. But yes, you got to have that cow set up. 

So if you ever buy a cow in, the rest of your herd’s on the program, you buy a pregnant cow in, you don’t know the history, make sure you remember her and she gets a killed vaccine while she’s pregnant and avoid an abortion because yes, I’ve seen a lot of instances where we get abortions from those vaccines. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:32:26 

Great, thank you. 

The next question is, what about preemptive measures to prevent pinkeye? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:32:47 

Yeah, I mean, I can say my two cents, and then maybe Lisa or Van can also chime in. I mean, pink eye, we don’t typically see this time of the year. I certainly have had it spread in a wintertime setting. It almost always means that there is something that’s causing eye irritation. 

So finding out what it is like, is there chaff that’s really irritating them in the hay? 

Is there something by the water source somewhere where they always go that scratches the eye and allows for trauma that then gets the eye infected because we don’t have flies this time of the year to spread it around or irritate the eye, right? 

I guess if we’re looking more into fly season for pink eye prevention, of course we do have vaccines for it, but more it’s about, I would say fly control and picking products that are going to work to prevent flies. And then I don’t know, like a lot of my producers will also use those oil rollers so the cows can go through and treat themselves ultimately and help reduce flies that way as well. 

I don’t know if Lisa or Van, if you have more to add to that. 

Dr. Lisa Freeze 

01:34:02 

The immunity that they get from the pink eye vaccine is relatively short-lived compared to some other vaccines. In order to really have your pinkeye vaccine work in the summer when the flies are at its worst, you would almost have to bring the cows back in, vaccinate them again mid-summer, and then have their vaccine carry them through the later part of the summer. So the vaccines are there. They’re part of a useful program, but they’re not going to be the be-all, end-all that some people think that they are. 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:34:30 

Yeah, that’s fair. And also it doesn’t cover both pathogens that can cause pink eye either. So that’s also a downside to it. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:34:41 

Thank you. 

The next question is, can you take stool samples to your vet to identify causative organisms? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:34:49 

Absolutely. That’s the best way. You can collect and keep separate and label tell us how old that calf is. 

There are some in-clinic tests, they’re not as sensitive, but if you’re having an outbreak, that’s usually where I start. And then we can also send away to a lab and do more sensitive and specific screening. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:35:16 

Perfect, thank you. 

Lauren and Van, you both talked about environmental and controlling the environment at calving time to help prevent these sicknesses and ultimately prevent calf mortality. 

What if I can’t move my cows or heifers to a new area for calving? What should I be doing? 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:35:44 

I can take a stab at that, I guess. And I know it’s an ideal thing for me to say to do that, and I know a lot of times it’s just not possible, especially with some of the crazy deep snow. 

My biggest thing is, if you’re going to calve in the same area that you had your overwintering, your pre-calving area, is when you’re just about to calving time. 

That’s when you do just a deep clean. You clean out all the bedding, you clean out the packs, and you just try to eliminate as much as you can of the fecal matter and the bedding that’s there. 

And then, you know, I’d like to put down like a stable lime. It’s not a disinfectant in itself, but it is a desiccant. It dries things up. The drier things are, the more likely it is to kill the bacteria, the viruses. 

It’s not going to do much against coccidia and probably not crypto, but it dries things up quick. So when it comes to time to do that, that’s an ideal thing. And again, cleaning out really does not count just throwing more straw on. 

I like what Dr. Lauren said about if you kneel down and get up and your knees are wet, it’s time to get them some drier bedding and removing that under wet bedding underneath. 

The cows like it because it’s warm and they lay on it, but it’s also because it’s warm. Man, is it ever an incubator growing all the bad stuff that wants to get our calves sick. So I highly recommend that to be one of the things. 

And just real quick there, Kristin, I noticed on that question about the modified live vaccine, if you do say you’ve introduced some that need a kill, they’re not on a modified live. Will that modified live spread to them? 

Really, the only way is if you give a modified live, you know, including your calves, and then that unvaccinated cow licks the leakage, that’s about the only way. In my experience is, yes, you can give your other cows a modified live vaccine and it’s not going to spread to those that aren’t vaccinated. So, you know, that’s been my experience with it there. Just make sure you know who’s who. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:37:51 

Great, thank you. 

I’m wondering if one of you would be able to touch on this Sandhills calving strategy and how that would work or how a producer could set that up. 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:38:09 

I’m happy to unless one of you two want to go for it. 

The Sandhills calving strategies, I love it. I think it’s great. When you look it up, Kansas State, any of those hit those, 

It was designed for big open areas and lots of room, lots of pasture room. And it’s almost overkill. What they want you to do is every two weeks after calving starts is you move everybody who hasn’t calved to a new area and you leave behind those who have calved. And that way you’re going to a fresh, new, clean place. 

You don’t have contamination from those calves. And your new calves, it’s like starting a new calving season every two weeks. Now, that’s almost impossible in most of our Eastern Canada settings, but if we had a couple of places, if we had two or three places that we could calve, rather than having one calving spot and then moving…your older calves out and staying there, that’s always getting contaminated. 

You leave your older calves in place #1, and then you move everybody who hasn’t calved. And you know, in our situation, maybe it’s the first one is maybe two or three weeks because we’re going to have hopefully 60% of our calves on the ground in the first three weeks. And then we move after three weeks, everybody who hasn’t calved, and then maybe another three or four weeks. And that’s going to get us out. Just depends on how long your season is. 

But it’s a wonderful way to decrease that load of pathogen that’s present in that environment by starting a new calving season every three weeks or so. 

Great way to go. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:39:38 

Thank you. 

The next question is, can I use mammary mastitis syringes for treating pinkeye? 

1052 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:39:53 

Yeah, I can answer that. I guess the short answer is yes, you can. And it does work. 

We don’t have a good topical antibiotic that we can use in a cow’s eye for pink eye. And often, honestly, it doesn’t make sense because trying to catch a beef cow and apply a topical, you know, once, twice, three times a day enough to control pink eye by the time we’ve seen it, it’s not going to be super helpful. 

A lot of the times we should be doing, you know, the fly control and or if it’s happening this time of the year, we really need to figure out what is causing the trauma and eliminate that. But yeah, I do have clients that do it. 

It does work sometimes for mild cases. So yes, yes, it can be done. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:40:49 

Great, thanks for that answer. 

So does it help to clean your calving area several weeks before and bedding it so the frost cleans something up and maybe use wood chips or shavings if a source is close by? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:41:23 

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s kind of touching on what Van was saying is like basically right before calving, removing it. I think the question is really asking, are we able to, if it gets cold enough, utilize the environmental weather to try to kill some stuff? 

Possibly, but the reality is that a lot of what is being spread around is definitely spread by the cows. The cows are carrying it. So just cleaning it out and moving away that manure pack is going to be the huge thing, right? 

And then of course, yeah, there is going to be some stuff in the environment after you’ve cleaned out, which is why Van’s saying, you know, throw down some of that lime, try to dry it up so it can’t continue to incubate, basically. I’m not sure if a hard frost is going to remove everything because a lot of these viruses can live in the cold and crypto oasis are extremely thick walled. Same with coccidia. 

So and then maybe wood chips would be reasonable. I guess they especially shavings are pretty absorptive. I guess they would provide good drainage. I don’t know. 

Van, do you have anything to add to that? 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:42:39 

They do absorb really well, shavings. The one thing I don’t like about them is they get on everything on a newborn calf. They get on that umbilicus. They get in the mouth and the nose. And so I don’t love shavings as the top part. 

Maybe a base, throw down shavings and then throw straw on top to help catch. And then it also makes a nice cake for scraping out. But yeah, I personally would prefer straw over the shavings just for that alone. You know, both of them can harbor bacteria. It’s not like sand where, you know, sand doesn’t grow much bacteria, but that’s not also not a great place to calve either. 

And I think I like straw because you can make a nice deep bed. The calf’s going to nestle into it and then incubate in its nest with its head kind of popping out and just keep warm basically. So better than shavings, I think, too. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:43:32 

Great, thank you. 

Question for you, Lisa. So at the end of your presentation, you briefly talked about the vigor scoring system, but didn’t have a lot of time to go over it in very much detail. So I’m wondering if you could just provide a few other thoughts or details on it and how producers can use that scoring. 

Dr. Lisa Freeze 

01:44:00 

Yeah, so like I said, that sheet is available on the BCRC website, so you can go and look at it in detail and kind of go over it when you have a little bit more time to process it. 

But basically, it’s looking at those milestones that the calf is supposed to reach in those time periods, right? 

So is the calf nursing at the appropriate time? 

Has the calf stood up at the appropriate time? 

Is it acting dopier than it should be? 

And that kind of thing. And you’re giving all of those elements a score and adding that score together to get a total that helps you decide whether you need to intervene with that calf. 

So does it need colostrum? 

Like Lauren talked about, you know, should you consider tubing it? Sooner rather than later. 

Should you consider providing it supplemental oxygen or, you know, giving it some mouth to mouth or using a ventilator to try and get some extra oxygen in there if it’s a really dopey and those kind of things. So it’s a really good decision making tool that helps you address a calf sooner rather than later, you know, sort of in a quantitative way using a scoring system to give you a better idea of when you should intervene if you’re not quite sure. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:45:12 

Great, thank you. 

Another question is, does Lime kill crypto or at least help suppress it? 

Maybe Laura or Van, if you’ve got thoughts on that? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:45:32 

Yeah, I mean, I think Van definitely touched on this, but no, it’s not going to really kill crypto. I think it’s going to dry up the environment. 

Crypto lives in a wet environment, so certainly it would suppress it, I guess, if you, you know, crypto is spread by water, waterborne. So the drier it is, the less likely it’s going to spread for sure. But I’m not confident it’s going to kill it 100%. 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:45:59 

Yeah, I agree. Not likely to kill it. Like if we, bringing in a new batch of pigs or something and we got to sterilize this, hey, we’re going to throw out some, vircon or some kind of a…potentiated hydrogen peroxide or something that’s going to mostly kill everything. 

But yeah, in our cow calf situations, there’s so many places that aren’t, you know, we’re not dealing with concrete walls, four sides and a roof and a ceiling. 

So just doing the best we can and lime is often that. And yes, I agree, it doesn’t directly kill it. It certainly can slow how it’s spread for sure. You know, throwing it on top of a bunch of wet straw is not going to do any good part of the 

The good part about that is you’re cleaning out and getting right down to that concrete. That’s as valuable as anything. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:46:49 

Thank you. 

Another question is, we use frozen colostrum from mature cows taken and bottled the spring before. 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:46:58 

It’s cheap, readily available. Yeah, I think that it is a good idea. I mean, especially if they’re mature cows, their colostrum quality is going to be better. 

It’s also going to ensure the calves are exposed to colostrum from your farm. So the pathogens that are there are going to have antibodies in that colostrum. So it will be better for those calves. 

I think the thing to remember when we’re using frozen colostrum is if it stops working, if you start having issues, then you should test, and maybe even before, you should test the quality of that colostrum, which can easily be done with the, I think it’s a Brix refractometer, so that 

But you know that what you’re keeping is good quality and that’s what’s going into the calves. 

Dr. Van Mitchell 

01:47:55 

My question or my concern or thought with that is, is where, you know, where is the colostrum coming from? 

If it’s from cows, was it, you know, taken away from some of the calves that were already going? 

Is it if it’s coming, you know, like one practice that used to be common is guys would go to Holstein farms, dairy farms and go get colostrum from them that’s watered down it’s got Yoni’s in it and you know there’s some issues with that right so the frozen thing it definitely opens up kind of a whole new thing and yeah Dr. 

Lauren hit it just right like a refractometer can tell you if it’s any good or not. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:48:28 

Great thank you. 

Next question is do probiotics help reduce scours? 

Dr. Lauren Wilson 

01:48:49 

In an active scouring calf, I don’t know that we have enough research on this to really accurately answer this. It’s never going to be wrong to give a probiotic to a scouring calf because we have a disruption in the gut flora. We just don’t know enough about their gut flora in that way. But we do know a disruption is bad. 

So a probiotic, yes, it’s helpful. 

Is it going to reduce the scouring or reduce the time that they’re scouring? Maybe, probably not. 

Like, I do think that’s pathogen dependent, right? So, you know, crypto, they’re going to scour for five days. They just are. Rotavirus, coronavirus, you know, you’re in for it, you’re riding out that infection. 

So, I don’t think so, but maybe in the future we’ll have more information on that. 

Dr. Lisa Freeze  

01:49:44 

Maybe. I do use them. I do recommend them to people. 

Anecdotally, people do say they seem to help, maybe on a calf that’s not outright scouring, maybe on a calf that’s just starting the process or has…really mild scours. 

But I would be the same. I couldn’t say for sure one way or the other. Maybe it makes us feel better than the calf because you feel like you’re doing something. But I don’t think they’re going to hurt anything at least. 

Kristin Thompson 

01:50:18 

Thank you for that. 

I think we’re going to close out the Q&A session now. 

If your question wasn’t answered, I would encourage you to reach out to your veterinarian, local extension agent, producer organization, or you can reach out to us on social media. 

Thank you again to our incredible speakers, and thank you all for spending your evening with us. We hope that you gained some valuable information that you can bring back to your own operation. And this webinar was the third webinar of our 2026 series. 

So, there will be a post-webinar survey link after the webinar is over, and we really appreciate any and all feedback on this webinar as well for potential future topics as we plan for next year’s webinar series. 

Once again, thank you to everyone for joining us and our speakers and have a great rest of your evening.