Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have been asked to talk about calf health, how to raise healthy calves. I'm going to, concentrate a little bit on calf diarrhoea because obviously, an hour is not very long if it comes to all the problems that calves can have. And I'm going to go into a little bit of prevention, but also some treatment options.
Now, raising healthy calves in theory, is actually pretty straightforward. You just have to see that the immunity of the calf is higher than the infectious pressure that the calf is surrounded by. But that's just theory.
We all know that in reality, that's a completely different story. Now, what is influencing the unity of our calves, it's, mainly the cholesterol management. Everybody agrees that cholesterol management is, basically the single one most important factor to keep calves healthy.
Also further feeding off the calves, and that's, mainly, obviously, it's important in the dairy calves, but we are going to hear another talk about that one. Vaccination can be used to boost the immunity of the calves, and then on the other side, everything that has to do with cleaning, disinfection, housing. That, helps to keep the infectious pressure down.
So, what do we have to start with? We all know that dystopia is a really a huge risk factor for disease of young calves. So we have to start with, actually trying to reduce or to avoid dystopia.
And that depends on the size of the heavens at calving. That should be 60% of mature body weight at mating and 90% of mature body weight at calving. Then we have, some figures there about the body condition score in cows and heifers, and obviously we have to bear in mind the right choice of desire and the provision of pre-calving minerals.
Now, to get the heifers in the right shape, at calving, obviously everything has to work well, and we know that the 1st 3 to 4 weeks in the life of the calves are actually very important for this. So let's start with husbandry and housing factors. The calving area, there is an, advantage of individual maternity areas.
However, in some studies, it has been found that the regular removal of the bedding, so actually keeping the calving area dry and clean, is more important than if it is an individual area or if there are more than one cow together. Right now, for the, reduction of infectious pressure, we are still of the opinion that the immediate separation of calves from the dams and the removal of the calves out of the calving area are very important. Then when it comes to calf housing, There is an advantage of indoor housing or of outdoor housing or indoor housing.
And there's an advantage of individual houses versus group housing, at least in the first, yeah, few weeks of life. When I say there's an advantage of individual housing, then that only means that when it comes to infectious pressure. We know from recent studies that calves that are raised, at least in pairs, actually start feeding earlier and they also have a better social competence later in life.
However, that does not mean that we can just put two calves in the place where, so as long as now one calf has been because otherwise, we are going to get into big trouble. So for now, we still Recommend individual housing in the first. 10 days to 3 weeks of life, that depends a little bit on the management system and preferably outside in hutches.
That can look like this. Obviously, that's very nice because the sun is shining. What should, shouldn't happen is that there are more than one calf in one hutch.
We have done studies and found out that, the risk of calf diarrhoea developing in such a system is extremely high. As I said before, if you want to put two calves together, then they need to double the space in one calf. Now, for the calves in summer, if the sun is shining, it is nice to have a roof over the hutches.
It's not absolutely necessary, and in winter if it's raining, actually for the calves, that's not a problem. But it usually is Heightens the joy that the staff is actually giving to calf rearing if there's a roof over the hutches. Now, as I said, there's no point in putting two cars in the space of one hatch.
However, there are these group hatches that can be used after the individual phase. And this is also good because if you have raised your calves in individual hutches in the outdoor situation, and then you put them into a store with poor ventilation, obviously, they might not have died from diarrhoea, but you're going to get into big trouble with pneumonia. Obviously, the cleanliness of the hatches or whatever you use for the calves.
Between new cars is very important as well. It is possible, of course, it is possible to raise calves inside as well. However, if the situation is, for example, like, here, then you will probably not raise the healthiest person in all.
If the cars get in groups, group housing always puts more pressure on the management. So we know that small groups are easier to manage than larger groups. And also stable groups are easier to manage than groups where calves are put in too frequently.
That's just a few examples. That's an example of what would work relatively well, and that's an example of what's not working, due to, less of, not enough cleanliness, and, no light, no air. So, and that's also the reason why.
Those pictures actually exist because we got called to that farm with big trouble. Big problem when it comes to, disinfection or, or cleanliness, cryptosporidia and Croydia. And that's because they are very resistant to environmental factors, and only few disinfectants work.
With disinfectants, for starters, the farmers have to choose the ones that are actually working against cryptosporidia. But then again, the proper handling of the disinfection is important as well. So, you cannot disinfect dirt.
That's just not possible, even if you have the best disinfectant ever. So a proper cleaning beforehand and the drying off of the surfaces that are supposed to be disinfected is very important. And when it comes to cryptosporidia, we also know that just the use of halofuinon alone is not going to solve all problems if the management factors and the cleanliness are Not improved.
With cryptosporidia, also you have to bear in mind and you have to tell your farmers that this is a sonosis. So they have to keep in mind their personal hygiene as well. Now, when it comes to cryptosporidia and Croydia, those are parasites.
And a very wise guy, unfortunately, I don't know who said it in the first place. As one said, you can feed a cow out of a worm problem, but you can't warm a cow out of a feed problem. And that's the same with cryptosporidia and Oidia, which means that we have to make sure that our calves are actually well fed.
And in many cases, improving the feeding of the calves can actually already, also make major improvements in calf health when, especially when it comes to calf diarrhoea. So, this means that we should, think more about feeding for biologically normal growth. That's a topic that is very close to my heart.
However, there's a talk, about that afterwards by Chochina, so I'm not going to go into that any further. Now, back to the improvement of the immunity of the calf. And that's, as I said, the single most important factor is the colostrum management.
Now, why it isn't, is it important? We all know that it's important, all farmers know that it's important. But I have the experience that it might be a little bit.
The lack of the details. They are just not so sure about the details, what they have to do to, for a proper colostrum management. Now, why is it important?
Because obviously calves are born without any anti antibodies. We know that, because the placenta of the cow is different to that of humans or, or other animals. So, no antibodies can actually reach the bloodstream of the calves while it is in utero.
But as soon as the calving process starts, the calves are at risk of infection. And that means that there's kind of a race going on, and I always say that in that race, I definitely want the antibodies to be the Jamaicans that are in front and not the Americans that are behind. There's also a lot of other stuff, not only the, antibodies in Colostrum.
There is nearly An awful lot more of anything that is good for health. In Colostrums. So for example, insulin, growth factors.
Minerals, vitamins, of course, a lot of protein because that's the antibodies, but also energy, so more fat in cholesterol than in normal milk. And that's good because calves are born without any, fat or without many energy reserves. And so we also know now that there are long-term effects of colostrum intake that cannot be explained only by the uptake of immunoglobulins.
And that's the, a lower age at first calving. Higher average daily gains, higher milk yield at first fluation, and higher feed efficiency. So all those factors can be reached just by giving a good portion of cholesterol.
Now, what's important about cholesterol quality? So the first big one is breed. We know that our dairy breeds have a lot poorer colostrum quality than our beef breeds.
However, that does not automatically mean that these calves are have less failure of massive transfer than dairy calves. This is from a study that has been done in, in Ireland. With an a big number of calves, and it was actually found out that the risk of failure of passive transfer in beef calves is higher than in dairy calves.
And why is that, if the cows have a lot better colostrum quality than the dairy cows. Now, it's probably a mixture of different factors. The many beef breeds have been bred so much for meat that the cows actually do not have a lot of cholesterol anymore.
The cholesterol might be good, but it's just not enough. And also, many beef breeds have so much trouble with calving that the calves are actually not fit enough to, drink the Colostrum after they are born. So we also in beef calves, we have to take care that the calves are actually standing and drinking after they are born.
Other than that, the age of the dam has always been in discussion. We are going to get back to that later on. Breathba to nutrition.
There is not an awful lot of scientific evidence about that, but there's anecdotal evidence, that, for example, in years with particularly bad silage, you always have, vets complain that the calfails in spring is very bad. So, but we cannot pinpoint it from a scientific point of view. The season of calving is important.
For example, due to heat stress, the cholesterol quality can go down. Pooling can, is, we don't like pooling of colostrum for two reasons. One is the biosecurity, reason.
But, what's also important is that cows with poor quality colostrum give usually larger quantities of colostrum. So, they are going to dilute the good quality colostrum down if we put everything into one pool. Vaccination of the dam, is not going to improve the cholostrool quality in the sense of the number of the immunoglobulins, but it's going to improve, the number of specific immunoglobulins to the, To the ingredients of the vaccine that we have used.
So usually, this would be roavirus, coronavirus, and then E. Coli component, where, what we use for the vaccination of the dams. The dry period lengths has to be very short to have a negative impact on the cholesterol quality.
What's most important in the farmer's hands really is the timing of the Colostrum collection. So, the cholostrum in the cow's udder gets diluted down very fast after, the calf is born. So if the colostrum is not harvested right away, then we cannot expect to have the best quality colostrum anymore.
We definitely recommend testing the cholesterol quality. Of all cows, in, in the dairy, on the dairy farm. There, it can be used those colostrometers.
They have this, traffic light system on them. However, they have been criticised for their low sensitivity. Also, they have to be used by standard temperature.
I also don't like them because they are easy to break, so my preference would be to use a tricks retrometer. That's on the picture here on the right, very cheap. And we have a lot of scientific evidence now that this works very well, and we use a cutoff point of 22 bricks percent, which means that anything above 22 bricks is good quality cholesterol.
And if it's below, then you should either top it up with good quality colostrum or you should go for a some stored good quality colostrum instead. We have a lot of figures from the Holstein cows, the American Holstein cows, and we know that they have very, very poor colostrum. I have done studies with German flicky cows.
Now, which have, picked up on milk yields in the last, yeah. Last 1020 years, very fast, so they are not where the whole stands are, but they have very good milk yield now. And this goes, as you can see in that graph, this comes with a loss of colostrum quality.
So, even in those German flag feed dairy cows, we have about 1/3 that is not producing a good quality chorostrom anymore. I've talked about the age of the calf. This is also from a study that we did.
And you can see here that the cows in the second lactation actually has the poorest. The colostrum quality. However, it's not that bad, so that you can say, OK, we should discard the colostrum of those cows right away.
The differences are statistically significant, but they are actually not that big. Now, what are the factors influencing immunoglobulin absorption? It's mainly the time of first feeding after birth.
And this is because of the loss of the absorptive sites. So they, those huge globulins, usually they would not come across, get across the, The wall of the intestines, but they would just be digested and only for a very short period after the calf was born. This can actually be achieved but they get into the bloodstream.
Also, the secretion of digestive enzymes is kicking in. And also the bacterial colonisation of the intestines is interfering with the absorption of the immunoglobulins. And that means that the window for proper colostrum management is actually very small, so about 2 to 3 hours after the calf is born, there would be optimal absorption and then it goes very fast downwards from there.
Mm. After that, another factor influencing immunoglobulin absorption is the method of feeding. And obviously with beef calves, we would expect them to drink.
So this picture is only meant for dairy calves. We know that if we leave the dairy calves just with their dams in about 50% of cases, it's not going to work. So they do not, they are not going to get.
Enough passive transfer. So we have to hand feed the dairy calves with colostrum either with a bottle or with a bucket. Or we have to stomach tube the colostrum, which is perfectly fine, that works well.
If we do the stomach tubing only once and only with the intention of getting the colostrum into the calf, we know that the absorption is then nearly as good as if the calves drinks, drinks the colostrum themselves. Bacterial contamination, is also a big factor. We only know this.
Well, for about 1015 years now, that is really, really that important. And that's because the bacteria interfere obviously in the intestines with the absorption of the immunoglobulins. And those are numbers also from the research that I have done here in Bavaria.
And we have, we did bacteria counts, so the coliform. And the total bacteria. And you can see here that in that, for example, rates like this, so in 9 farms, or 9 farms, the total plate count was Above in all samples above the recommendations.
So you can see here on this side, there are still a lot of farms where the hygienic, hygiene of the cholesterol can be greatly improved. And we did a similar study. In Ireland and basically that is the same picture.
So there are farms that are splendid when it comes to hygienic cholostrum management, and then there are farms that are really, really bad. So in case of calf health problems, there's not only the cholostrum quality that you have to check out, but also the hygienic, hygiene of the cholostrum. That can improve, be improved with pasteurisation.
However, not like you would pasteurise normal milk pasteurisation of colostrum has to be done for 60 minutes at 60 degrees. There's this, those system on the market where you can fill the colostrum in. I'm not going to do any advertisement for that.
I think it's, also obviously, surplus litter that we might not want to produce. That's just, to say that there are people that have recognised how important, that tool is that pasteurisation can really be good management tool for Colostrum as well. Animal Health Island has come up with this nice, slogan for cholesterol management, the Colostrum 123 for dairy calves.
So the milk that is used for the first feeding should be the first milk of the cow. That's also something that some farmers do not recognise that in dairy cows, the second milking can actually not be Called colostrum anymore. That's just transition.
It has by far not the quality of the first colostrum. Then give the colostrum within 2 hours from the calf's burst and give at least 3 litres of colostrum. Storage of colostrum for emergencies can be easily done and should be done.
Again, very important, the hygienic milking and the clean containers. We do not recommend to store colostrum any longer than one day in the refrigerator. If it's frozen, you can store it for, for a year without problems.
And for deep freezing of colostrum, those flat ziploc, Things are actually quite nice because they have a, a big surface which helps then afterwards, for starters with quick freezing and then, but then also it helps with the thawing process. Colostrum replacement products can only, should only be used if We actually know what's in there. And also they should not be used routinely, but only as a last resort in individual cases because the colostrum replacement products can never have the exact spectrum of antibodies that fits for the farm where we want to use it.
We can also assess the cholesterol management in the calf, so it's one thing to assess the quality of the cholostrum that the cow gives, but on the other hand, obviously it has to end up in the calf. This again can be done with a blood sample and can be measured with another, a different refractometer that this actually has a scale for total protein. You can also send the sample to the lab.
Total protein is pretty much the cheapest, parameter that, the labs have to offer. And so screening for failure of passive brands where. We should sample 12 healthy cars between 2 and 10 days of life.
And then we measure the 7 total solids on the total protein via refractometer. And on a farm level, we talk about failure of passive grants where if more than 20% of the samples are below, below 55 grammes per litre. So that was the part of the prevention of disease in general and especially of calf diarrhoea.
I also want to talk a little bit about the treatment of the diarrhoea c. And the principles of the treatment of the diarrhoea cast are really quite easy. We have to replace the fluids that get lost.
We have to treat the metabolic acidosis that might exist. And with all that, we usually also replace the most electrolytes. We have to prevent, or to treat, in some cows, septicemia or bacteremia, and we have to provide for energy.
So how are we going to treat the calves? For starters, we obviously have to get the farmers to let us treat their cars. And for the farmer, it is important to know that the point where they will not be successful in treating, in saving the calves with oral treatments is when the eyes start to sink in.
So if there's a slightenophthalmus developing, the farmers should actually call you. Because the calf at that point has lost about 8% of body weight, and, at that point, it usually needs intravenous fluid therapy. Obviously, if a calf looks like this, then, it has lost up to 20% of its body weight in fluid, and this will, Pretty sure only be safe with a continuous drip infusion.
What we have found out is That, when it comes to the amounts of fluid that you should give intravenously, you can also touch a little bit by the depths of the endothmus. And if that's less than 7 millimetres, we have learned from some studies that you, you will be fine with 5 litres. However, if it's more than 7 millimetres andalus, then the cows will not be rehydrated the next day if you don't give 10 metres.
We use hypertonic saline in, in our cows, for example, for, toxic mastitis. In theory, we can also use this for cars. I will just explain on the hypertonic saline solution, how that works, and then tell you afterwards why we actually use a different hypertonic solution in calves for that purpose.
So how does hypertonic saving work, for volume expansion? We give the hyper, hypertonic fluid into the bloodstream. Which is obviously isotonic and the, OK, gastrointestinal system is isotonic in the extravasal around room is also isotonic.
So, with our infusion, the bloodstream gets hypertonic. And this means that there is fluid is being drawn into the circulation system. Obviously, then we have to fill up, the pool somehow, and that can be done orally.
So we can give additional fluids into the, rumen. And can fill the system. In that way.
So this is just a way of big resuscitation, which can be used. In very dehydrated animals. So how do we treat calves with diarrhoea, and we can judge from the eyes, how dehydrated they are, so how much fluid they need.
And we can judge from the behaviour, how acidotic they are. So if a cough is just has diarrhoea, is alert standing, shows no dehydration. And so basically it's fine other than that it has diarrhoea, then we can assume that it does not have metabolic acidosis.
And we will just read with a good quality or electrolyte solution. Or the farmer will treat once you good quality electrolyte solution. Obviously, you, your job is to tell the farmer what is What a good quality electrolyte solution is in the first place, and we get back to that later on.
What should oral electrolyte solutions do or rehydration solutions? They should supply enough sodium to normalise the extracellular fluid volume. They have to provide agents that facilitate absorption of sodium and water.
They have to provide an alkalinizing agent and they have to provide a little bit of potassium because that also gets lost with diarrhoea. Now, oral fluid therapy. So a proper oral electrolyte solution should have about 90 to 130 millimos per litre of sodium.
That's usually, OK in the commercially available solutions. For the facilitation of absorption of sodium water, we usually use glucose. And the glucose to sodium ratios should be between 1 to 1 and 3 to 1.
So glucose is the only reason, or the, the fact that glucose and sodium has this linked transportation is the only reason that the oral rehydration concept was developed in the first place. Then alkalinizing agents can be either sodium bicarbonate or often used acetate and propionate. Acetate and propionate have some advantages, so they also facilitate the absorption of water and sodium.
They provide some energy. They do not alkalineize the apomasin, and there is no interference with the milk clotting. However, sodium bicarbonate is still doing fine in many oral electrolyte solutions.
How much of those alkalizing agents should be in the solution? There we can judge that from the strong iron difference. So if we take the sodium plus the potassium and subtract the chloride, then we should get a figure between 60 and 80, and that's the strong iron difference of that solution.
And if it's between 60 and 80, then that's fine. The issue with the quality of oral electrolyte solutions is that many solutions, even, labelled for treatment of past diarrhoea, still do not have enough alkalinizing capacity. And that's because the, concept of oral electrolyte solutions, comes from human medicine, and human babies do not tend to get as acidoic as carbs.
So, we really have to look at the label of the solutions if they are actually good for the purpose of treating hearts with diarrhoea. This is an example of how we can actually produce oral electrolyte solutions of good quality with nearly no money involved and with ingredients that you can get at the grocery. So we can use low salt and bread soda and glucose for that.
You can, you can find this recipe on the calfcare website of Animal Health Island. And this would be really up to current recommendations of an oral electrolyte solution. So what if the calves are still standing securely, but they have thymus?
So if the eye starts sinking in, you can assume that the calves still have some acidosis, so base def deficit of about 10 millimos per litre. And that means they would need 250 millimoles of sodium bicarbonate or about 20 grammes. If the calves are very tired, listless, wobbly standing, or if they have to be helped to stand up at all, so, basically, if they are drunk, Then you can assume that they have about a base deficit of 20 millimos per litre.
And this means that they need 500 millimoles or 40 grammes. Of sodium bicarbonate. If the calves are down, apathetic coumadose, and really, recumbent.
And or if they have an impaired palvi reflex, and they, you can assume that they have a severe base deficit of more than 20 milli per litre. And then they need 60 grammes or 750 millimo of sodium bicarbonate. We can use hypertonic sodium bicarbonate, so 8.4% sodium bicarbonate solution.
We have to make sure that we do not give it faster than 50 millilitres per minute. And then we have to use it in combination with either oral solutions or we can use it prior to a continuous drip infusion. It also can be used to spike, normal saving.
There is a slight risk of hypernatremia in calves with already elevated sodium levels, but that basically only happens if the farmers do not take care enough with the preparation of the electrolyte solutions so that they are too concentrated, or if the calves are already retreated with sodium containing. Infusions. You can see here how that works with the hypertonic bicarbonate solution.
So obviously, it raises the base excess very fast. And then, as I said, you can use that follow it up with a drip infusion, or if the calves are not very dehydrated, it's actually already enough for the treatment of the calves, and it has a very positive side effect, that it lowers also the potentially life-threatening, hyperkalemia that can happen in severely dehydrated carbs. How about antimicrobial treatment?
Antimicrobial treatment should only be used in calves with severe systemic illness, when, yeah, in calves with diarrhoea that also have systemic illness. This has been very nicely, found out by Peter Constable, in an analysis that he did in 2004 already. And this means that the reason for that is that, normal coughs with diarrhoea, so calves that are still pretty unaffected when it comes to the general condition.
Antibiotics would obviously not work because the, the causative agents, for calf diarrhoea are mainly viruses and cryptosporidia. But, however, if cars are in really bad condition, they have a higher risk. For bacteremia.
Or for septicemia, which means that they should then actually be treated. And the first line of choice of antibiotics should be ampicillin, amoxicillin, or po potentiated sulfonamides. Theoretically, safety of selfkome and surrokinalos would work well.
However, since they are in that pool of the highly critical antibiotics, they should actually not be used, just for cause with diarrhoea unless there's a really, really good reason for it. If the calves have no systemic illness, then they should just be monitored and no antibiotics should be supplied. The reason why we should not give antibiotics if it's not actually necessary, I think this is pretty obvious to all of, of us by now.
We can very nicely, create resistance in bacteria versus antibiotics just by using them, and that's, it's really not important if we use it for a good reason or if it, we abuse it. And this is also from a study that has been done in Ireland, and we can see here, This is the, the resistance patterns of bacteria that have been found on farms and the The, the bluish columns are the amount of antibiotics of that. Substance that has been used on the farm.
So this works very well if you use, we use an antibiotics, we are always going to create antibiotic resistance. I talked about prohibition of energy. Obviously, there's no reason to assume that calves that are sick need less energy than calves that are healthy.
And If we look at this study that we did with a lot of cars a few years ago. Then you can see that, cachexa is actually one of the reasons why calves with diarrhoea do not survive. And The metabolic.
Problems Comes very far down and actually calf only gets a poor prognosis if the pH of the blood is below 6.845. So that's very, very low.
And all the other things that we see here, why calves die with diarrhoea, are either other diseases that we could not cure even if the calf did not have diarrhoea. Or it is because the calves are cat hectic, and that usually only happens if the calves do not get enough milk. Already beforehand, before they develop diarrhoea, and then if they still get not enough milk or even less milk if they have diarrhoea.
So it's very important, as I already, implied when it came to prevention, to actually make sure that our calves are well fed. And then to make sure that if the calves get diarrhoea anyway, that they still get the milk and they get the oral electrolyte solution in between the milk feedings. And with that, I'm happy to take your questions if they have popped up now.
And thank you for listening. Yes, thank you so much, Ingrid, a wonderfully informative presentation, so we do thank you for for being involved there. We do just have a quick question here.
If anybody else does want to submit any questions, now is the time to do so. We have a question Ingrid that's asked, does pasteurisation of colostrum not affect IGG function? Not if it's done in the matter that I said.
It's 60, for 60 minutes it's 60 degrees. This has been found out in a, a really big study, so this is safe. If you go, higher, how you would do the pasteurisation of your normal milk, then the, immunoglobulins are actually destroyed.
And also, the colostrum then gets kind of, yeah, that, that's not really have a good consistency anymore, so the calves would not drink it anymore. But with 60 minutes and 60 degrees, that obviously works. So I have never done it, but that's what the science is.
Yeah, absolutely, that's great, thank you. Would you happen to know where we could find that study at all? Yeah, but not from, not from the top of my head.
No, that's fine. Perhaps we'll, we'll connect afterwards then and we can send out some information to the attendees. Yeah, absolutely.
I can find it, but, but really I have, I have a note in my hand. No, that's fine. It has been, it has, been done in, in the US, so there's a lot of studies on Colostrum done in the US.
Yes, absolutely. That seems to be the only question that we've had. So thank you once again, Ingrid for speaking for us.
It's, it's been a fantastic webinar, we really do appreciate you being involved. Yeah, thank you as well for having the chance to, to speak. I just one remark, .
It is very odd to speak without having any background noise. So actually, it might have been a little bit faster than I would have been when, when I would actually have some. No, no, that's that people are actually listening.
I'm sure we all were, we just have one final question actually that's come in then, sorry, just before you go. So Sandra asked, does 60 degrees for 60 minutes kill the para tuberculosis bacteria? No.
Even normal pasteurisation, of milk, does not completely kill, mud. So that would also not work in the colostrum. It will be decreased.
But it's not completely safe. You still have to go for your normal illness disease management that you only take colos from from . Yeah, safe cows, so that, that have not been tested positive and, and all that stuff.
So only pasteurisation is going to help. But it's not going to be completely safe. Perfect, thank you and Sandra said thanks there as well.
