Episode 119 - Setting calves up for life

But first of all, let's get into the colostrum side of it.

It's something we say over and over again, but tell us what studies did you do and what did you find in terms of that colostrum?

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to convey some learnings out of our research that we are doing at Bioeconomy Science Institute for the last decade or so on calves.

And yes, the first thing first, that is a claustrum.

And claustrum, I always start saying like, I can say, claustrum management is a matter of life and that's for the calf.

It's very important for both dairy and dairy beef producers because it can impact not only their survival, but also there's a long-term implications of getting things right during the first couple of days.

So as in our farms, if we see like we are a seasonal system, we have a lot of cows that are born in a short window of time and we have a lot of claustrum that is available and there is a different categories of claustrum i'll just categorize the claustrum into two things one is a gold claustrum that is a first milking claustrum and you bring your cows after calving for the first time for the milking that claustrum is called gold and the rest of the claustrum that is a basically transition milk for the next step before it goes into your rat, that is a transition milk and we call it a silver claustrum.

So that is important to understand that there is a huge difference between the quality of the claustrum.

So when I say claustrum, that means gold claustrum, the first milking claustrum.

The second important factor in our system is when to pick calves, when to collect calves from the calving paddocks because we are, as it sounds like, we have a lot of, it's a very busy time for the farmers.

So they go, depending on the farm and their decision-making on that, they go either once or twice or even thrice to pick the calves.

So that gives the calf a different opportunity amount of time that she can spend and cycle from her mother.

So we tested both factors.

In one of our experiments, there was a control experiment where we collected the calves either once or twice daily.

And then we fed them like gold cloths and silver cloths for the first two days.

What we are seeing in that control study, feeding, collecting calves early and then feeding them high quality cloths and having A lot of benefits for not only for the health of calves, but we have seen a reduced number of treatments that the calves receive that have electrolyte use.

But also we have seen it's a positive impact on the gut development and the growth of the calf.

So that is that the bottom line out of that research is that go early and bring your calves and feed them like a high quality cluster.

So when just to conclude that I always say like follow three cues and those three cues are go quickly.

I mean, twice a day at least.

Then measure the quality of colostrum that I was explaining.

That is like gold colostrum.

You can use colostrum meter that is easily available and it can measure the Briggs value.

And the Briggs value, the Briggs percentage, if it's over 22, that is a good quality colostrum.

And so that is a second cue.