Drs. Katie and Matt attend AABP Recent Grad Conference in Lincoln, NE.  This conference was originated 9 year ago for doctors that are less than 7 years in practice.  The focus is on clinical skills and real life situations.  Dr. Katie said, “It was better than last year and last year was good.”   

Dr Hardesty Spoke in Vermont He enhanced the “What Separates the Top 20% From the Rest” and presented it to 367 registered participants in Burlington.  There was also a very strong trade show.  The participation is especially impressive as the conference falls right in the middle of Sugar Maple season.  Ohio and Indiana dairy industries are much larger than Vermont’s, but that level of interest in the industry is rarely seen.

Peer Group Meetings This is the peer group meeting not to miss.  Dr Joel Franks, Zoetis, will explain how to get 7 more pounds of milk from your bimodal let down cows. March 26^th at 11:30 at Speedway Lanes, 455 N Herman St, New Bremen. Pizza and salad available at 11:30, the talk begins at noon.

Dr. Joel’s words: Basically, I briefly describe the cow’s let down physiology (“how” milk is letdown) building around that with the “whys” of a good pre-milking procedure and “what” that looks like.  After which I bring in the VaDia to show how it can be used to access milking time events.

Prep procedures and milk let down seem to be very elementary, but I am continually amazed how educated cow people try to break the rules, and when they do, they are surprised with the negative outcomes. 

Prep procedures that could be improved lead to bimodal milk letdown. Dr. Erskine at Michigan State showed that bimodal cows give 7 pounds less milk.  That milk is not recovered at the next milking.  

Adult Cow Respiratory We are seeing some cases losing significant adults.  Check your vaccinations.

Colostrum  Every week, we see something about the importance of colostrum.  Heifer colostrum is shown to be just as good as older cow colostrum so use it.  There is a challenge in winter and spring having enough to feed calve 4 to 6 liters.  Dry period length is a factor.  Less than 47 days yields 9#, 47 to 67 days =11# and greater than 67 days =14#.  Feeding HiD and DCAD diets may help.  Choline has shown variable results.  Harvest within 8 hours of calving shows no difference in yield.  Oxytocin one time in first time heifers increases yield by 1 liter.

On the calf side there is a significant advantage to being fed colostrum by 2 hours of age and really declines after 6 hours.  Think though your routines of how you get colostrum into calves.  Replacer may be part of this, but it does not include many of the immune cells that colostrum does.  Strategies include milking fresh cows in the next group including first in the morning.  We then need to feed the calf right away and store any left over in a freezer.  Bacterial contamination can be a huge problem if you can’t have someone feed the calf.

We spent some time brainstorming on how to get colostrum into calves sooner.  We have had success with refrigerated (for 3 days) or frozen for up to 6 months and thawing or warming this while the cow is in labor.  The best system is to have a milking stall, where colostrum is harvested as soon as the calf is born then it is fed within 15 minutes or certainly less than two hours.  The biggest issue with these systems is keeping everything clean.  These stalls are away from the milking center, but need to be cleaned like the big parlor.  We have had success washing several claws and milking every cow with a clean claw.  Cleaning the catch bucket and hoses still needs to be addressed.  A little bit of Clorox is not enough.

How do we know if we have been clean enough?  We can do standard plate counts of colostrum or milk that is being fed to calves.  Simply freeze a sample of what you are feeding and our lab is very good at reporting how well you are keeping colostrum clean or not.  Potassium sorbate can help. How do we know if passive immunity is adequate?  We can take a serum sample between 24 hours and 3 days of age.  We take these any day and report within 24 hours.  We have seen farms have 100’s of calves over 5.5 total protein.  This is what is possible.

Dystocia calves do not absorb immunoglobulins until they correct their oxygenation and acidosis.  If a calf doesn’t stand within 30 minutes, it needs oxygen, a rubdown, caffeine, or IV fluids before giving colostrum.  We can get set up for this.

Calf Lung Ultrasounds: Some Revelations

Dr. Andy Lefeld

Recently, I’ve started doing lung ultrasounds on calves.  Primarily those calves still on milk.  I wanted to take time to discuss my revelations from the dairies we’ve been doing routine monitoring.

Ultrasound works well at transmitting sound waves through fluid, that’s why it works well for pregnancy diagnosis.  Well, lungs are air filled, so when ultrasounding lungs, we really shouldn’t be able to see much of anything.  If lungs get fluid in them, either from inflammation (infection), or milk (aspiration) we can then see these changes in the lungs in our ultrasound images.  This fluid results in consolidation of the lung tissue.  Calves receive a score generally 0-5 based on the amount of consolidation present in the lungs. Similar to Somatic Cell Score testing lactating cows to find sub clinically elevated cell count cows, commonly calves with a lung score of 3-4 can look normal.  Scanning lungs can really help identify when a pneumonia problem is happening, and find calves that otherwise appear normal, but have terrible lungs.  We can also monitor response to treatment to better identify chronic calves and help make more informed culling decisions.

I’ve been surprised to see the amount of aspiration pneumonia that can be present in calves within a few days of birth.  Generally, its brought on by using the “old-fast” nipple to save some time on that first colostrum feeding, or issues related to tube feeding calves, either really mobile calves, or improper technique. If nothing else, we need to be aware that these things can cause us some long term issues, from poor doing, unthrifty calves, to post-weaning pneumonia challenges, to poor milking lactating cows.

We’ve also used data from scans to adjust vaccine protocols, specifically as it relates to post-weaning pneumonia. By doing lung scans, we can better find the age when pneumonia (often times subclinical) takes hold.  I’ve yet to complete a lung scan session and said to myself, “that’s exactly what I’d expected to see.”  We can get a better handle on calf health if we better understand what’s happening with their lungs.