Incorporating practices to protect calves from scours
Getting live, thriving calves on the ground is a central component to the success of cow/calf operations. One of the biggest threats to calf health and well-being is diarrhea. Veterinarians encourage producers to incorporate practices that provide clean pastures for calving to helps fight against scours in calves.
Clean Pastures
When aiming to minimize a calf’s risk of having diarrhea, producers will want to contemplate two things: clean pastures and stocking density. Livestock specialists consider a clean pasture to be an area that’s been free of cattle for quite some time.
“Generally speaking, a clean pasture is going to have been empty for several months. But that several months could vary based on the risks of what you are trying to address,” Rosslyn Biggs, DVM, assistant clinical professor, director of continuing education and beef cattle extension specialist at Oklahoma State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said.
Typically, producers are looking to calve their herd in clean pastures to reduce the pathogen load that can cause calf diarrhea. The fewer pathogens and contaminates the less of a chance of newborn calves getting sick.
“The other component to this is not just clean pastures but we want to think about animal density too. We can put them in clean pasture, but if I put 300 head on ten acres, it doesn’t stay clean very long. It is going to get contaminated quick,” Biggs added. As producers increase the stocking density of a pastures, the pathogen load also increases.
Sandhills Calving System
Veterinarians and livestock specialists point to the Sandhills Calving System (SCS) as a model of how to create a clean calving environment. Though first tested and utilized in the Sandhills of Nebraska, the SCS has come to be a system implemented by cattle producers throughout the country.
The SCS is structured to systematically rotate pregnant cows/heifers to new pastures each time part of the herd calves. In the SCS, producers utilize several contiguous pastures for calving instead of high-density calving lots.
In simplified terms the SCS works as follows. All the pregnant cows are turned into the so-called first pasture as soon as the first few calves are born. They all remain there for two weeks. Then all the cows that have yet to calve are moved to a second pasture. After a week, all the calves born in the second pasture remain with their mommas in that pasture and the pregnant cows are moved to a third pasture.
The SCS separates calves by age to prevent transmission of pathogens from the older calves to the younger calves. Additionally, the system moves pregnant cows to clean pastures thus minimizing new calves’ contact with larger pathogen loads in the environment and contact with the cow herd as a whole.
“I cannot overemphasize the Sandhills Calving System enough and its approach to decreasing pathogen loads for those calves to try to address, in particular, neonatal diarrhea but really overall calf health too,” Biggs shared.
Additionally, when addressing calf health. Biggs encourages producers to pay attention to the health and body condition of the momma cows in the herd. When calves are first born, they rely on immunity gleaned from antibodies in colostrum to help keep them from getting scours and other illnesses. A healthy momma cow has increased ability to produce plenty of high-quality colostrum for their calves.
