Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us for tonight's BCDA webinar. My name is Sarah Peterson from the BCVA board, and I'll be tonight's chair. Our speaker, Joe, is happy to remain online for questions, so please type any that you've got in the Q&A box during the webinar, and I'll save them for the end.
If you've got any que technical difficulties, then we've also got webinar vet on hand, so please let us know what problems you may be having by also using the Q&A box, and we'll do our best to assist you. If you can't see the Q&A box, then if you wiggle your mouse, the taskbar should become visible at the bottom of your screen. So back by popular demand tonight is Joe Henry, following on from his extremely well received April webinar on suckler herd management.
Since graduating from Glasgow in 1998, Joe has worked, in Northumberland and in New Zealand, primarily with suckler and sheep clients focusing on preventative medicine, production KPIs, and grazing management. In 2018, he undertook a study tour to large cow calf operations in western USA. Alongside his wife Rachel, he also runs a farm which includes 100 head of Lyn cattle.
Alongside this, and just to keep him busy, he also provides a veterinary input to the East Northumberland Farmers Club benchmarking group, which was founded in 2003. So Joe has a wealth of experience and knowledge to share with us this evening on management of the weaning of the spring born suckler calf. Over to you, Joe.
Thanks very much, sir. Yep, hello everybody. Thanks for coming along.
Yes, I'm one of 4 vets here in Black Sheep Farm Health, and we're, farm only practise. We believe we're the only beef and sheep only practise in in the country, possibly in Europe. We don't have any dairy clients at all, so, we get pretty heavily involved with our beef and sheep farms.
Right, tonight, by the end of this, hopefully you're gonna understand the importance of weighing calves of measuring the farmer's output, basically what the cow is producing, understand the dietary changes the calf goes through at the point of weaning and hopefully how to, smooth those changes. It's best. Possible.
We're gonna talk about separation anxiety and different ways to reduce that. The impacts that has, we're going to talk about the parasite challenge these calves are under, . And how to reduce their impact and also talk about the housing environment, it's absolutely critical, .
OK, so, Firstly, just to set the scene a little bit, . It's been quite a big swing to spring calving suckler cows, in this country. As people have looked at the costs and and such like and to a certain extent it might just be fashionable, I think if If people have to house their cows, it's not necessarily the most in every case, more efficient than autumn calving.
But I think the important thing is whenever people are carving is they actually have a calving spread of sort of 9 weeks or so. Anything longer than that is, is, you know, just makes management and that logistical nightmare. But, just Talking about the profitability of suckler farming, .
The farm bench, the QMS, the HCG, just like you to write down a little notepad next to you, what are the things that increase suckler profitability? But there's, 3 main things really is low fixed costs, fixed costs in this country tend to kill our suckler profitability. A lot of them have to do with the winter.
Low variable costs, the, the less you spend, obviously the more profit you have left over. And the biggie is the output. The kilos of beef per cow mated or for our sheep farmers kilos of lamb per cow mated, and actually I think it's more important to think about per hectare of farm.
I think in this country we've been very guilty at concentrating on the the. Cow and actually if you have 1 cow to 10 acres, you know the cow's gonna have a much better chance of producing a good output, but the farmer's still not gonna make money if he's paying rent for those 10 acres. So, farm size for most of our farms is limited, so I think we've got to get, try and get our farmers to think about more output per acre or hectare.
The other thing about suckler farming is essentially we're producing a foodstuff, we're producing beef for people to eat, and I think that's been ignored far too much. A lot of farmers think they're producing fat cattle, and actually they're producing beef, and I think it's worth reminding farmers, . When they're talking about making, buying new balls and things like that to look for intramuscular fat EBVs and, and actually at the end of the day, unfortunately this country, we're eating something like 17 kg less beef per person than we were 40 years ago, and I think some of that is down to some pretty moderate beef eating experiences.
Right, so why is growing the calves faster, better? Essentially it comes down to money. So you can get these calves to sail quicker and for spring born suckler calves, as I've said, about 80% of the costs of a suckler system is in the winter.
And if you're calving in the spring, weaning those calves in the autumn, start of the winter, you take them through the winter, . And some of them again and hopefully try and get them finished before that 2nd winter. 2nd winters when the cost kicks in.
And so if you're managing to keep them growing faster than not having such a big weaning check, and weaning is sort of the most traumatic event in that calf's life, . Then you're more likely to miss that second winter. You know, obviously if they're growing faster at any particular point in time, they're worth more money.
So if you, if the drought hits and you need to sell them, but they're bigger, they're worth more. And because you're pushing them on and hopefully getting them growing quicker, actually they'll be killed younger and so their lifetime maintenance costs will be less. So from a efficiency point of view and looking at your carbon footprint of your farm, that, that, is improved as well.
Now, talking about these kilos of beef produced per hectare. I think it's obviously it's fundamental to know how many kilos of beef the cows are producing. That's basically what she's producing, .
For all the feed and effort that farmers are putting in, and farmers are really good at numbers generally. But a lot of the, you know, any dairy farm will know how the yield how many litres of milk he produces a year. The arable side of things, they know how many tonnes per acre they're doing.
Even the silage things, they'll know how many bales of silage they've done per acre or silage trailers per acre. It's surprising how many farms don't know their average weaning weight or the weaning kilos of those cows are produced. And it's absolutely, you know, crucial to know the output, if you're not measuring their output, they don't know whether they're improving or not.
And if they're not improving and other people are improving, then actually they're going backwards. One of the things I learned in New Zealand is we should be trying to improve 3 to 5% a year. And that probably goes through our vet businesses as well.
But unless you actually measure that, you don't know whether you're improving or not. And then when you start getting these numbers. Farmers get pretty excited, you know, around about end of October, November, I'll start to get texts off on my phone, average weaning weight 313 kgs this year, or, you know, 299 or whatever it is.
And then when the farmers are out shooting, they can start chat because the farmers do like numbers and clearly. They can compare amongst themselves, but that's not as important and sometimes not even applicable, you know, some of them, depending on the farms they've got, when they're calving, what stage they wean at, what beads they have. The important thing is that they should be improving year on year for their own benefit, and you can certainly benchmarking is a useful exercise.
The calves are often coming through for pneumonia vaccination or fluke treatment or something along those lines. So there's absolutely no excuse really for not waiting. So we feel so strongly about we actually, rent out for free.
We have a set of weight tray, this is it here sitting in the bottom of the crush. It's not a lot of money, you know, in the scheme of things, 1200 quid, 1300 quid, something like that, and any of our clients can borrow that for free as long as they clean it off before they bring it back, . And actually, pretty much everyone who's ever borrowed it has gone away and bought a set of weigh scales because farmers like it and then when they're putting the cows through, they can weigh the cows as well and.
Often similar sort of time cows coming through to be PD or yoni tested, and it's quite interesting to match up the calf weight with the cow and see how, you know, which are your more efficient cows, and it's one of the things that, hopefully is driving better output per hectare in that 900 kg cows seldom wean a 450 kg calf. But 600 kg cows are much more likely to wean the 300 kg calf. In fact, our most efficient inverted commas herd is a herd that decks the cows put to an Angus bull, and some of those cows can actually wean their own body weight at sort of 7 months of age, which is pretty extraordinary, .
Obviously that can be massaged by the cow condition, you know, if you think one condition scores normally about sort of 50 60 kg and, It's not the be and end all, but it it's something that I think we need to be looking at in this country. So how do you improve your average weaning weight? Well, Well, yeah, how, how, how would you?
So, obviously, there's a number of different things. The most effective way is to increase the number of calves born in the 1st 3 weeks. And that the obvious reason that matters is because the cars on average are older at weaning time.
And so, this is one of the reasons why I think average weaning weight, uncorrected is quite an important KPI because you're getting, impact of calf growth rates as well as fertility in the one KPI. And Remember that the number born 1st 3 weeks is from when the calves are due to calf, not from when the first calf is born. So for a native 283 days after they put the ball out for continental 287, something along those lines, and the .
Cos quite often you might have a set of twins a week early, and that would skew the whole result. So count for when calming's due to start and include any of those in that period, and. Industry targets suggest sort of 65%.
There's no reason we've got clients that are doing 75% to 80% calving in the first three weeks. There's, there's, when we, when I speak to our farmers, they say, right, well, how far do you lamb over? What's your length of time that you lamb over?
I say, you know, 5 weeks, 6 weeks. And, and why is that good? And they'll explain how and they've got batches of lambs they can deal with and it's easy to manage and and they concentrate on the job in hand and move on to the next one.
And then you say, well, and how long do you carve over? And why, and why don't you do that, and there's actually not a lot of reason, if you can get the fertility right, why calving shouldn't be like a lambing. And they can really focus on that job of the carving the cows and then they move on to, you know, making some home.
So increase the number of bull in the first few weeks, absolutely important and another way of doing that is actually just take the bull out and reduce the calving period and have, a more compact calving period. Obviously, unless you sort out the fertility issues, which is a, a, a topic in itself, if you just take the bull out early, then, then you're not gonna get, you know, you might have problems with high girl rates. Another way to improve the average weaning weight is lift up the bottom end of those calves.
So, heifers, calves, first carvers, you know, calving at 2, don't put them on the far end of the hill, you know, make sure they're on some good grazing, and if that's not available, maybe pre feed them, any cows sucking twins. Need a bit of help. And so it's, it's a good idea, I think if that's the case that, you know, we have them as a separate batch together and, put a creep in.
You can keep the sheep out of the creek. The other thing is obviously, the three-legged stool of output is genetics. Generally, you know, there, every breed has good and bad, and there's some very good, fast growing, probably concentrated a lot on growth rates, possibly at the detriment of maternal traits in this country.
Feed, obviously absolutely crucial and, reducing the disease, well, that's where you guys come in as the vets if they have a rampant outbreak of, foxidosis or neonatal scars and it really pulls back your weaning weight. And by measuring that, you can actually see how much that, that the impact of disease can, can cost the farmer, even though they're not writing a check for that, if all the calves are. 1520 kg lighter, then that's 40 odd quid a car over 100 cars, 400, 400, you know, that's, that's quite a amount of money.
Right, we're gonna do a little diet change exercise now. I want you to think about What, what is the calf consuming pre-weaning? Some kind So we will write that down.
How, how much of whatever it's consuming? What percentage protein is that, that it's eating? And then I want to think about what's a post-weaning diet.
Scribble a few things down. How much is it eating after weaning? And what percentage protein is that?
So, essentially, Springborne suckled calf . It will vary if there's creep, . But essentially 275 kg calf in you know 7 bits, body weight, dry matter intake, 7 kg of dry matter.
And no one really knows, but, there's been some work done, but if we say approximately 6 litres of milk a day, sort of 78 months into lactation for a beef cow, that will clearly vary on the breed of cow, at what point, how long it's been cowed, what nutrition is, but it's, that's, that's an educated. Amount, so 6 litres of milk is actually 1.2 kg of dry matter, and that's really top quality protein.
26% or thereabouts. And we'll talk a bit about protein later, but it's not just the percentage protein, it's the quality of protein. The same way as urea is 300% protein, but actually or is quality, .
And the other thing you'll be eating obviously is grass. So we've got 1.2 litres of of milk, dry matter, that's 5.8 litres of grass, and autumn grass, green grass, as long as it's not standing hay, you.
So You can see overall that calf's diet is probably. 22% protein and, and some a significant part of that is is really good quality protein. So think about now what that calf is eating after weaning, traditionally, once it's housed.
So often they're housed and put onto silage, . A lot of silages are pretty moderate around here. It might be better in the dairy area, but, a lot of the proteins are 11.
Somewhere along those lines if if they've got any clover silage, it might be much higher sort of 15%. Aller, but a lot of the grass sages 1110 to 12% really, . And then they might give some barley, which is again and a 1% protein, a couple of kilos of that if they're feeling really flash just instead of barley they might use beef nuts.
Which might be 14 or there might be 16% if they're really. The real I am 160% protein. So you can see that if, and they'll give, you know, two couple of kilos of that, so you can see the protein step change is quite vast.
From an overall Protein was 22% to somewhere probably around about 1213. You know, that is a big change in the protein. And I think a lot of the problem in terms of sort of rationing, you know, the rationing computers and stuff, is that they're all based or appear to be based on the dairy cross calf that's weaned, well, when the dairy calf weaned 6 to 8 weeks or something.
So by the time they're 300 kg, they're fully functioning rumours and they've probably been weaned for 3 or 4 months, whereas these suckled calves. The 300 kg, but still a significant part of their diet has been milk, and I firmly believe that that first month after weaning, the overall diet needs to be approximately 18% protein, which is a lot higher than, a lot of programmes and. Done in the past and by, by doing that, you know, and actually measuring those calves growth rate, you can really smooth that hump of, You weigh them at weaning, weigh them at Christmas, and actually find, they've lost weight, so.
Giving them a really good high level of protein for the first. 3 weeks a month of weaning really help reduce that, in fact they can carry on growing, which obviously is is ideal. And so for that first, I think quality of protein is really important.
It used to suggest soya, 0.5 kg, 3/45 kg of soy a head a day. Obviously environmental credentials of soya, as we all learned about is, is not great.
And so, I've been looking at alternatives like the Novaro or the UltraPro, which are, heat treated rape meal to try and give more bypass protein. They, you know, have some like the ultra pros very dusty. Novoros quite hard to get hold of.
If you can't do that, then there's beans or rape meal. And the quality of those proteins isn't, isn't great and get, you know, work out a ration, to the suit. You don't necessarily need a mixer wagon, just pour some protein on the top, first wee while.
The other thing I think it's important to talk about what we're doing on the nutrition is the actual trace elements and . I think it's quite a good idea once the calves have been in for 6 weeks or so, do, you don't really try to sell and stay distant to take some bloods. I don't think we really do liver samples in calves, and see where they are.
So in terms of the pre preparations for winter, I think it's . Trying to get from this change from the from grass and milk to whatever feed they're on, and it's a couple of weeks for room and bugs to to adapt to any change in diet. I think one of the keys is to try and make better quality size for the calves.
Don't just make a big heap of suckler cow silage, which traditionally, you know, at the same time have made hay, really should be looking at a multi-cut system whereby the calves get the really good stuff and the the cows get the sort of the, the hay type quality 9 ME silage, . And as I said, the clover and Lucerne can give really good quality silages, 15%, protein and, you know, knocking on for me, which, which isn't that much, you know, that's sort of similar to cake, some of the cakes really, and, and they can grow it on farmland to buy it in, so more environmentally sustainable as well. If you're going on to a barley beef intensive ration, I think it is useful to start the, the creeper early, pre-weaning certainly, .
Get the rumen bugs used to that starch, and there is evidence that actually that helps prepare, get the roomum papillae going, and helps, you know, . Improve the sort of the, the function of the rumour for, for getting the starch, and so just switching them onto, the starch at the point of weaning is definitely not the way ahead. And cows to have, teach the calves what silage is, you know, if you can imagine going straight from eating cabbage every day to them being presented with sauerkraut, .
You know, you might, might turn your nose up at it and you might not eat very much of it for the first day or two. And That is You know, essentially what we're asking these calves to do. So I think it's really important to try and either give them signage in the field pre-housing, or once they're housed, keep the cows with them for a week or two to,, so they will teach the calves what signage is and where to eat it and stuff.
But basically what you don't want to do is coincide housing with the change in diet. And if we can try and. Just the change in the environment is a big stressor in itself, to change the environment and to separate them, and to change the diet is, is, you know, a recipe for disaster really.
So depending on the farm set up, either unwind a few bales for the last couple of weeks before housing or keep the, the calves on the cows, . Lot more interest in the fodder crops, part, you know, we talked about the first slide to reduce those fixed costs, not needing to have a shed, not needing to, it's always more efficient to take the cattle to the feed than the feed to the cattle. And you've got a crop of kale in that instance, 17% protein or thereabouts, you know, green leafy, really good, and, and with the right infrastructure, and if you've got a dry field, not every farm can do it.
Then, that's good, but just the same when you're transitioning onto the fodder trots, particularly onto Fodder Beach, which Can have quite high levels of starch as well, it needs to be done gradually, and not just. Day one, put them on, turn them on for an hour or two a day, or make sure there's a big grass run back for them to eat out the grass as as well while they start to get used to eating the forage crop. In terms of separation anxiety, .
It's nearly always better to take the cows from the calves. So, so they're, they're in an environment that they've been in with their mum and then you take the mum away. So it's to remove that double whammy of stress, basically.
They know where the water is, they know what the feed is, and then you take mum away, . The traditional way of doing things of putting cows in one shed and the calves in the other, and they bow their heads off for 3 days and then you get a pneumonia outbreak, it can definitely be improved upon and. If you can keep the cows and the calves in sound and smell contact through a fence or through a set of hurdles in the shed, you know, split the shed and put some hurdles or even put some electric wire across the shed.
Then it both the cows and the calves are more settled because they can wander up to the fence, they can see their calf, they can't actually get to their calf, but it reassures them when they go back to feeding. This is a picture of America, and you can see that the calves were away grazing, the cows away grazing, that's the day after they were weaned, . You know, they're not all at the fence shouting their heads off, because they've, they've wandered up, they've seen mum and then they go away again, and it needs to be a good fence, you know, with an electric in it to stop.
You know, breaking it down, but, it works really well, fence line weaning, and it's less stressful for the animals. If you have any holiday makers in your whole day cottages, they'll get some sleep, you know, it's just a good thing for animals, . I don't know if any of you have used or aware of the nose flaps, talked about that in a wee while, and the other thing is that.
If you have housed the cows and the calves together and you set a creep area up for the creeps to for the cows, calves to go and eat creep, and very quickly you'll learn to spend time in those creep areas because it stays cleaner and dryer without the cows trampling it all up, mucking everywhere, spend a lot more time in the creeps, and after a couple of weeks, just once they're all in and you've fed them, just shut the creek gate and they can't get out. And again, really low stress, . They're used to being separated from their mothers anyway.
One of our farms has basically he suspends an iron bar from the the roof of the shed, and he has that as an electric wire, basically it's electrified and the calves can go underneath and the cows obviously can't because they're cooler. And then, and so the calf's end of the shed stays clean and dry and the calves spend all their time there and then they go across tom maybe twice a day. Think can come back and then one day he just lowers that bar another 18 inches.
The casts can't get back and it it's like zero stress, it's brilliant. These are nose nose flaps, you know, from Canada place but there is, I think it's every penty sales in this country, and the idea is you put these in the calf . And you can see it flaps over the over the mouth so they can't actually suckle, but they can obviously keep grazing.
And so it means that they they get their change in diet because they're not getting the milk. They're still being with mums, they're not getting a separation anxiety, they're just getting the diet change. And then a week later, you bring them in and separate them and there's far less stress in those calves because they've already gone through the diet change, and the cows for that matter.
Not everyone will stay in, but most of them do, and that's, that's another way of doing things if you haven't got infrastructure in terms of fence line. Obviously you can reuse those. Yeah, yeah.
So, one of the main parasite challenges we've got to cope with these little calves. There's a big clue there, lung worm, you know, pneumonia is one of the biggest, . Biggest costly diseases in the calves, .
So we've got gut worms, we've got lung worms. But lace, we've got fluke. And, and, on nearly all the farms, and we need to put something in place to actually reduce their impact.
No point feeding the flute, for instance, as well as the calf. You're not going to get your, your output. You're not going to get your growth rates when we get to 600 kg by 18 months old if if you don't sort out your parasite challenge.
So, There's various ways of getting rid of the gut worms and the lung worms, . Using the Amex, I personally quite. Big fan of the pre-housing andlementing.
And particularly the longer acting avermectins. The reason being, it allows them to kick out all those lung worms when they're in the low stress environment of grass and hope with plenty of air flow around, obviously they're in the field, get their lungs, you know, totally cleaned out, while they're alongside mum. It can coincide, you know, handling two weeks before housing, give them an injection of ivermectin or a pneumonia vaccine or using one of the longer active products like moxydectin can be 5 weeks pre-housing, .
And It should improve the growth rates, because that tends to be when the gut worms, the gastrointestinal worms are at their highest challenge as well. And sort of all the 5 packet calculation can improve the growth rates by 150 grammes a day. Well, if that's 5 weeks, then that's 5 kg.
What's, what's 5 kg of beef worth? Well if you think that they're probably worth £2 a kilo live weight, you know, that's a, that's a tenner, . Per calf, which adds up when you think that the The dose probably only costs £1 or something like that, you know, that's a really good return on investment.
Personally, I much prefer the injections to the poons, . Number of times investigated poor, you know, done feet leg counting, which I think is always worthwhile, whenever you do any management medication, it's always worth checking that what you think's gonna happen does happen. So one of the things we do routinely when we're doing the BBE check tests, so in the new year, we'll do some feet leg counts at the same time.
And These spring born suckled calves can have a real mat of hair on them, you know, they're designed to then outwinter, that's how sort of God made them. And then we tip a little bit of paw on their backs and expect it to do a really good job, and some of them actually say don't clip the backs out before you put the paw on on. And I've definitely had cases where we've still had eggs with suspected resistance to ivermectin.
We've then injected them with ivermectin and there's been no feet leg counts. So, very much for injection for, you know, I think all the lot of the poor on avermectins were all that work was done on dairy animals, much less hair, you know, not nearly such a waterproof mat on as some of these beefy suckled calves. If, if that's not possible, then, I'm quite a big fan of, i.e.
The pre-housing doses and possible of the white drench benzomodazole drench at housing, in terms of very low levels of resistance in cattle because it's a bit more effort, . 20 odd years, pretty much just the Main poons have been used, and so it gives them a really good clean out plus you get a galeium and cobalt and it's pretty cheap. Post housing flucoside.
Well, how soon can you flu medicating cattle? You'll all be shouting back, I'm sure. There's nothing that kills fluking cattle, less than 2 weeks old.
So the, the soonest you can fluke after housing, after removing them from a source of domestic area is a fortnight with the trilobenzoyl drench, . And this is one of the reasons why the combination of flu can worms seldom ever are the right. Drug to give because Often they're a fluke a side that doesn't kill fluke down to.
Well, varying lengths of time from 7 to 10 weeks, you know, some of them don't be down to 5 weeks, and yet they'll kill the worms there and then. So do you do them at housing and then have to repeat the flute dose because you haven't killed any of the flute that picked in the last 10 weeks, or do you wait 10 weeks and then give them it, in which case you've fed the worms all that time, plus they might have contributed to a pneumonia outbreak, . So very much.
Give the worm ideally before hou housing or certainly at housing and the flu aside a couple of weeks later for the trilobendazole. Or, the nitroxenil, rodax 67 weeks afterwards. Depending on the flu challenge, but the actual suckler cows, I think waiting a few weeks and, and giving them, ntroxenil is no problem.
The big tough livers seldom flu causes. In that suckler cows, big problems and it just means you're not using as much trilobenzole on the farm. Obviously every time you use it, you select for resistance.
So if you don't have to use it, then don't, and that helps save it for the sheep primarily and but potentially in calves as well. So the housing environment. I can't really overemphasise how important housing design is.
This is their home for. Depending on where our country sort of 4 to 6 months. And, you know how the stack effect works, put the cattle in, the heat generated by the cattle, have out there at the top there.
And the moist air that the cattle produce with all the bugs in it goes out the top and the clean fresh air comes in from the side, and that's what's meant to happen. There is a really good booklet, . It'll be online as well.
HDB better cattle housing by design, and, it gives you a lot of info in there, and it's really easy to use. But essentially, I think when you're on farms, appraise, part of the health plan, I think should be appraise the the sheds where the calves are, especially talked last time about the health management. You know, if you're getting any cases of pneumonia, you need to check the The housing environment, .
There's just, you know, there's plenty of farms who never have to treat for pneumonia and Getting the sheds right is one of the reasons for that. Often, in my experience, the outlet at the top isn't big enough. These, Farmers tend to put sheds up.
They say, oh, well, I might be tipping corn in, . You know, once every 5 years if I can't get it away or what have you. And what's even worse is sometimes they put those covered, those covered central ridges in, which sort of let a little bit of air out but not nearly enough.
And if there's any sort of crosswind at all, it actually sends air in at the top rather than up and out. Far better to have the chimney design just with little lips at the top and as the crosswind actually sucks air out, . That a lot of the sheds in this part of the world have been put up in the last 20 years don't have.
See enough outlet. If you imagine a paper bag, if you, if you blowing into a paper bag, if you just put a small pinhole in it, you can't get much more air into that bag. And so if there's not enough outlet, you're not gonna get any more fresh, nice, clean air coming in, dry air coming in, and the dryness is important because.
Big cattle, finishing cattle and cows will produce something like 70 litres of moisture a day. In the air that they're breathing out, the water vapour in the urine, in the muck, and that is a lot of water. And if, if all that moist air can get out the top, then actually you'd lose, use less straw in the shed because it's a drier environment so the straw goes further.
Plus the beasts are happier. Because they're not damp all the time. Dampness, bugs love living in dampness.
The, the virus causing pneumonias and things like that can survive. Hours and hours, hours longer in a moist environment than it can in a dry environment. So do a shared audit, it's in there, a rough rule of thumb.
Big cattle sort of 600 kg plus the 0.1 of a metre square outlet per animal, but you look at the shared roof, I wouldn't necessarily get a. A set of ladders out these pretty high, approximate, it's good enough, 2020 centimetres across by how many feet long, how many cattle are in the shed, or how many metres long rather, and, and you can work it out, and often that's not good enough.
The side inlets need to be at least twice, preferably 4 times as big as the. Central Ridge leaving. One of the ways of checking if the stack effect is working is, is, you know, set getting a handful of straw.
Set fire to it and see where the smoke goes. Now obviously, you have a bucket to put it in so you're not gonna set the shed on fire, Metal bucket that is. If the straw's not dry enough to catch fire, well, that's indicating there's pretty poor ventilation anyway, too much humidity, and don't do that on a windy day.
Every shed in the world is well ventilated when there's a howling gale. It's the still days, the hanging, foggy days that you get pneumonia because they're the days that the shed doesn't actually work itself, you don't get that positive stack effect ventilation. So it's a still day, you can do a little smoke test or smoke bomb quite easily.
And see where that, if that ventilation is up to spec. So the air quality is . Absolutely, you know.
It wants to be dry. If you're using betting machines, then, Try and make sure your straw isn't too dusty. I think since the roundup and stuff, most people's straw tends to be better these days, but .
Sometimes it can be a horrendous environment and if you have got clapped bales and you're depending on the bedding machine, you try and work out some way, especially during that that stressful period around weaning of running the cattle out, bedding the shed, and then putting the cattle back in once all the stew and dust has settled down. Some feeds are dusty, especially the intensive sort of beef rations. Great tendency to over crack the barley, to get, so there's no spent grains coming out being wasted inverted commas, and you end up with a sort of flour type product, cattle are putting their heads into, gives them dust again, helps predispose to ammonia.
Leglation we've talked about. The other thing is clip clipping these cattle's backs. As I said earlier, these designs keep the worst of winter weather out, and heat stress can be quite a problem with spring born suckled calves, especially if they're on a sort of decent diet.
you can see the cattle sweated up and just like if you go for, you know, in the winter you go for a run, sweat. And then you stay out in your sweaty clothes, it cools quite badly and you actually get more cold, because you have sweated. And the same thing with the cattle, so take a couple of stripes up the back when they're having the pneumonia vaccine.
Or either they're getting weighed or getting a fluke treatment or have you, just two widths of the blade, it really lets the heat out and and you'll be amazed at how much actual thickness and fatch comes away. It really reduces that heat stress. So if they don't get in the heat stress, they'll actually eat more because they're because one of the ways that having the rumen is like having a radiator up your jumper and one of the ways they reduce the heat stress is they eat less, so the rumen is less active, exactly the same way as putting feeding hogs.
In a shed, you always get better growth rates if they clip. Right, we've got a little bit more time, so, . Quickly talk about the main pneumonia pathogens, I'm sure you're all aware of the viruses.
Every farm should be vaccinated for BVD in my opinion, and certainly should know the BVD status, but whether they have BVD or not, they should be vaccinating, . And seeing whether the RSV is pretty ubiquitous. There won't be many farms that don't have that.
And certainly if you're finding that in pneumonia, it's pretty quick and easy to vaccinate. There's loads of different vaccinations whether you can do that pre-housing or the intranasals which give you cover quite quickly, . The important thing to remember is there's no, you can't treat a viral infection.
Bare are becoming more common in the data from the labs, presumably because more of the virus is being controlled by vaccination and so don't forget about that, you know, you can't vaccinate for one of the strains of the, well, Mahya as it's now called, . And, and Yeah, it's worth, it's worth bearing in mind what are your pneumonia vaccination protocols and getting that those right and tailor those to the farm. I don't think there's any one programme that's the best.
It's, it's far specific as what diseases are present on that farm or what's causing problems. And that really, it, you know, disease is always a balance between if you think of a set of scales between infection pressure and immunity, and the immunity is obviously decreased by stress. So if you take the calves away from the cows and put them in a new shed, then that's stressful, so it's more likely that infection will occur.
You can obviously boost up the immunity by vaccinating them. You can boost the immunity by making sure that they're fed correctly, . And basically separating out all these stresses and changes, so, so the changes don't all happen at once, .
Right, so that's the end of all these things basically to be discussing with your farmers when you're talking about the management of weaning. It's not just a sort of one line how do you wean the calves. So just a little bit before any questions, these are the future BCVA webinars.
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Joe. That was a really, really thought provoking webinar, and we've already got questions, coming in for you.
We've got lots of time for questions, so please, anybody that has any, please type them into the Q&A box, and we'll come on, come on to those in just a second. Joe's covered a huge amount. This is a great opportunity to, tap into his knowledge and experience, .
A little bit more. So please, please, type your questions in. Before we go to those, though, could I just ask everybody watching, just to spare 30 seconds, to complete the feedback form before you sign off tonight?
It should have popped up in a new tab in your browser. We do read all the feedback. It really really, really is invaluable to us, in terms of helping us plan our, our future programmes.
So please spare the time. If you can't see the survey or you're listening to a recording of this webinar, then please feel free to still give us your feedback, and you can email that into us at [email protected].
So, as I said, keep your questions, coming in. But we'll go to the first one here that's from, Jennifer. She's got a question regarding the ratio between cot weaning and the weaning weight of her calf.
Would the ratio between the cow weaning and the weaning weight of a calf be a good indicator of improvement, i.e. In indices of conversion?
Yeah, so it can be, it's, it's really if you think you, you're keeping the cow, to produce the calf, so. Suckler cows aren't that efficient, and if you can at 200 days or thereabouts you can get 50% of the cow weight weaned, that's pretty good compared to like for instance in by sheep which might they wean at about 100 days and you're actually aiming for the weight of the ewe in two lambs at 100 days. For a cow, you're looking at half the cow weight at 200 days, and that's the sort of target.
So, as I said, it can be skewed by the condition of the cow. So if you've got very, if the cows are really quite lean and and sort of in poor condition, conditions score of 1.5, 2, then it can make you look more efficient because the calf will, will have, be taking up a bigger proportion of the cow weight.
But then if you then have to feed the cow really good quality feed to get her up to target body condition of 2.5 to 3 for calving, you've not actually gained anything. So you can adjust, and there are formula for adjusting that cow to calf weight depending on the condition score of the cow, .
And really it's, it's more just to try and get the farmers to think about it. And I think it's main thing is to get them to realise that massive cows are less efficient and that's been proven all over the world. And it's amazing how, yeah.
Well, it's still on the side of all of the drug packets, you know, they only go up to 600 kg for cows. Well, there's, there's, there'd be no one really with 600 kg cows, possibly some be the Galloway, herds and decks. I would say the average suckler cow weight.
Certainly in the 700s, maybe the 800s, and it's surprising how many cows we have that are over 1 tonne. Yeah, I think we'd all be surprised by how much some of these animals weigh when we actually, put them on a weigh scales. Do you think then, moving towards a smaller cow would be more profitable, for, for a lot of farmers?
Or do you find that you have some farmers with, with larger animals that are still, as profitable, despite the fact they have to work harder to get to that, kilogramme of I, I think, I think there's a balance, but in, in general, I think smaller to have more smaller cows is, is you're gonna make more money. You're better to have because if you think the 900 kg cow, she, she won't wean half her body weight because that's a massive calf, or, or very unlikely to and so. If you keep her for 8 years, you, you're having to feed that maintenance requirement having to feed all that extra kilos, you know, 200 kg, 250 kgs every day of the year for 8 years, takes a load more feed and the amount of feed is limited by the farm size and .
Yes, the cull cow is worth more at the end of its life because it's bigger, but you'll have less of them. And so As a general rule, I think, small to have more smaller cows, smaller cow, you, if you have 120 smaller cows or 100 bigger cows, you'll have the same amount of feed going into them, but you'll be able to. They'll be more efficient because they'll be nearer 50% of the weight at weaning time.
Great, thank you very much. And just before we go to the next question, if you've got your hand raised and want to ask a question, please can you put it in the Q&A box, as we're not able to, directly come to you. So, if you've got your hand raised, please put your question in the Q&A box.
And just, just to further point sorry on that is that in the ASDB they, they do talk a lot about the 200 day corrected weaning rate, which is useful in itself for for growth rates, . But obviously That doesn't take into account what how fertile that cow is. So if that cow carved right at the end of calving, you know, 2.5 months in, then.
Again, she's never going to get anywhere near her 50% of her weight because the calves had 60 days less to grow. And you can be keeping 800 kg cows and she's only weaning 180 kg of calf. You know, clearly, that's not an efficient system.
No. OK, our next question here, is regarding the chemical analysis of hay. So, is it common practise to ask for the chemical analysis of the hay when buying a new batch to find out the protein content?
This is a question that came in early in your, presentation when you were discussing, nutrition. It absolutely should be, but it's not very widespread at all in this country. What tends to be is price per bale, and what bales arrive, who knows.
So yeah, again, in New Zealand, absolutely the sil was analysed. I mean, it's quite tricky to get a fully representative sample, but you get an idea, and depending on the quality of the silage dictated the cost, not just the size of the bale, because yeah, very much so. I mean, the hay, hay does vary a bit, you know, from very moderate to.
To blinking awful. A lot of the time for suckler cows, that's OK, but it's not a good enough feeds stuff for the calves, really, and the silage varies massively, you know, the amount of difference in in silage can, it can be absolutely vast and absolutely everyone needs to get there. There's something recently I read that only about 15% of sheep farmers get the silage analysed or something bonkers like that, and you know, 90% of dairy farmers, obviously, you know, everyone should know their silage quality because if you don't know how good your silage is, you don't know.
What to feed the calf, you know, and then you'd be surprised if the calf, oh, the calves did really well this year because your silage was good. All the calves did, what's even worse is the calves did really badly because his silage was awful. And you could have done something by supplementing it earlier on.
That, that leads us nicely into our, our next question, from Beatrice, and she apologises because she realises this is a tricky question to answer without knowing the silage figures. But she asks, what would your personal choice be for providing protein for calves in the first month post weaning, if they're on fairly standard grass or whole crop silage? So often whole crop, unless it's like a whole crop with understone with peas or something like that, can be quite low in protein, and I've definitely, although it's got good devalues and, and good intake values, can be quite low in protein.
I'll be aware that whole crop isn't always the best thing for, for finishing cattle, they don't need that, but whole crop can be quite poor and, you know, good levels of starch with poor protein, and these calves are made of need the protein, so, . Often if they can, the, the ideal thing, as I said, is the clover bit throw on normal grass sort of silage and get a couple of kilos of beef nuts, 16, they can get 18%, but they're quite difficult to get hold of. And for that first month, I would give them 0.5 kg, 3/4 kg of either Novarofen get it or the ultrapro R.
Which are about 45% protein, of which half is the bypass protein. So that, that, you put those figures in, you get really good, good levels and it really smooths that. Protein change.
If you can't get either of those, then, then Sawyer, I guess. I, I don't know how people feel about that. Personally, I always feel a little bit uncomfortable, you know, shouting for the rooftops how sustainable grass-fed beef is in Scotland.
Talking about using soils. Sit overly comfortable. So I guess it comes back to knowing, knowing what's in your forage and what you're dealing with, and then looking to, looking to supplement, with the right, from the right sources.
So, changing tack to a little bit for the next question. It's in two parts, and it's concerning common problems that you see post-weaning. What would you say is the most common problem that you see post weaning?
And what is the main cause of this that you encounter? So I think it probably is the biggest problem is the unrecognised problem of lack of growth. And because some farmers aren't measuring that, they don't know.
And once they get the scales, and they start to see that actually they can be feeding these calves for 6 weeks and they don't actually put any weight on. And that's probably the biggest problem I would say in that. Costs £1 a day or or maybe more 1 pound 50 a day to to keep these, to keep an animal in the winter and they're not actually growing at all, so they're not paying you back anything.
Then after Christmas they start doing as the days get longer and February and March they start to really thrive. But because you've had that absolute check, so that's probably the biggest problem and really by talk. Done here, reducing the stresses, not bunching them together, getting the diet right, putting in place proper, preventatives for pneumonia, which is probably the biggest disease I would say is pneumonia post meaning, .
Then you should reduce that, so they get better growth rates, but yeah, I think that's probably that. The biggest problem. And that leads us nicely on to our final question, for this evening.
And this is one that you were asked last time as well, but how do you try and engage your farmers in this? Who you've mentioned about, weighing them. How do you engage farmers?
How do you encourage them that they need to do this? Do you offer a service through the practise, or do you encourage them to do it? Or how, how do we get farmers to start, to start, weighing?
So, I mean, I, I think there's, there's loads of different ins really and and probably no right or wrong way. But for instance, if in some parts of the country you have to TB test calves and things, don't you? I think, why not just stick the wave scale in the bottom when you're TV testing, you know, take it out with you from the practise and see what those calves are weigh in the first instance, and, and as I say, farmers like numbers, and it seems bonkers to me that.
They can be keeping cows and have no idea what they're producing, and they might be measuring it by saying, oh, you know, for selling calves at weaning, by how much they get for those calves, but that's dictated by the market because they might be worth a lot pence per kilo, or they might not be, depending on whether the trade's good or not. And the farmer has absolutely no control over that at all. What he does have control over is how big that calf is.
And by not knowing that. You know, it, yeah, so farmers should, they're quite financially driven, but they're quite busy people. And so if you can prove to them the importance of weighing those calves and actually knowing what they produce, and, and say, listen, you know how much corn you've produced, you know how much milk you produce, why on earth don't you know how much beef you've produced?
Yeah, it, it makes it quite stark to them that actually, what are we doing, you know, are we seriously running a business here or are we farming for fun? . Yeah, and, and generally you can sort of get them one way or the other.
So if you're there, get the, take the scales with you, if you're not, you know, sort of sting them into being professional animal keepers. They need to know their weights as much as anything, they need to know the weights from a medicating point of view, you know, to not to be a bee farmer and not have a set of scales. Is pretty bonkers, really, I think, you know, compared the amount of money they spend on tractors, .
To not have a set of scales is, is like it's a service for one tractor and they might have several. Right, so how much would a a set of scales cost? About 12 to 1400 pounds for that weight trade.
I mean it's not a big investment, and I think it's better if you can get the weight bars actually under the crush if you can, . But I can see you have to start bolting it to the ground and stuff like that. You know, but away trade isn't a big thing and .
Yeah, there's been, there's even been grants on them recently, so they get 40% off. You know, it, it's, I, I think every farm should have one. As I say, we rent one out for free to our clients, and it doesn't go out nearly as much as it used to.
Mm. That, that just shows, doesn't it? Shows that it's, used and useful.
Well, that's brilliant, because that's brought us, bang on up to, to 9 o'clock. So I just want to say thanks again, Joe, for taking the time to talk to us again this evening. Again, a really interesting, thought provoking, topic.
Lots of comments coming in saying, thanks very much and thank you for a great session. So thank you again. And also thank you to everybody who has also attended tonight's live webinar.
You can see there that we've got a packed series, up until the end of the year, with every, with our webinars running every month on a Tuesday. Our next one is Tuesday, the 15th of September, when we've got Gail Halliwell. Talking to us from the University of Nottingham about field anaesthesia techniques.
And we hope that you can, you can find a time to join us then. But in the meantime, thanks, Joe, once again for another great webinar. And, to everybody listening, good night, and, stay safe as well.
Thanks, Sara. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
Good night.
