Calves & Heifers

The goal for management when feeding dairy replacement heifers is to produce high-quality replacement heifers at a low cost. It is difficult to detail all of the business and biological aspects of developing information-based quality control management programs for dairy replacements in this article; therefore, the following key control points will be offered.

It is always easier to achieve a goal when working with biology, rather than against it. By taking advantage of important characteristics of bacterial growth, we can better achieve our goal of feeding clean colostrum.

Diseases caused by mycoplasma continue to emerge and remain frustrating to all segments of the dairy industry. In cows, several species of mycoplasma can cause mastitis, pneumonia, arthritis, abortion, and other disease syndromes. Mycoplasma bovis is the most common cause of mycoplasma mastitis and is one of the leading causes of contagious mastitis. In young stock, mycoplasma may cause a variety of disease syndromes as early as two to three weeks after birth.

Treatments for diarrhea caused by disease-causing organisms is a big deal to all calf raisers. It seems that we spend a tremendous amount of our time dealing with baby calves, working to feed them appropriate amounts of colostrum, keeping them isolated from organisms that may cause scours and, occasionally, treating those that do develop disease.

It is well-known that acquiring and absorbing adequate amounts of colostral immunoglobulins are essential to the health of the neonate, since calves are born almost void of any circulating antibodies. Colostrum is defined as the first milk harvested from the cow immediately after calving.

Physiology of the preruminant calf
Water makes up 85.8 percent of the bodyweight (BW) of a neonatal calf. Prior to birth, the developing fetus is surrounded by amniotic fluid that is 92 percent water. In the uterus, the developing calf is supplied with water by diffusion from maternal plasma, and at birth the calf is at its greatest water content, having developed in a water-based media where water has borne the nutrients required to allow rapid growth and development.