So, welcome to this webinar on optimising the calf environment and biosecurity. Through the out this webinar, we're going to be really concentrating on the environment and how management of that and the biosecurity of the environment really can impact on the performance of young stock enterprises on farms. So the aim is.
Webinar, you'll be able to sort of really have a good understanding of the key role the environment plays in calf health and performance. Be able to objectively assess calf environments on farm and then based on what you find, provide practical advice on how to improve the calf environment, be able to assess hygiene and biosecurity in calfing enterprises, and then take that forward to design biosecurity and hygiene protocols for calf rearing. So if we think about young stock growing it, what is it we're trying to achieve and what is it our clients are trying to achieve?
Ultimately, the focus is very much around healthy stock, so there's a desire there to minimise diseases such as pneumonia and scours. Want to minimise mortality, and as we start to look at the position of farming within that wider environment, we want to make sure that we are reducing antimicrobial usage and making sure medicines are used responsibly. And alongside that, we want to get to a point of efficient production.
So I'm thinking about how do we optimise growth rates, how do we maximise the efficient use of feed, and how do we make the best use of available resources and infrastructure. And if we consider any animal in any situation, there's a sort of susceptibility triangle going on. So we're, it's a dynamic interaction between the immunity of the animal.
The pathogen or the disease causing organism, and then also the impact the environment can have on that. And we're almost in that sort of constant state of flux where we want to maximise immunity, but if we have, sufficient pathogen load, it can overcome that and we can get disease. And similarly, the environment will Impact on exposure of the animal to that pathogen, but it can also have a negative impact on the immunity because it draws energy if we're, let's say, putting an animal in a cold situation and so they we're going to end up burning more energy to keep warm, but they can also in a point where it can add stresses to that animal.
So today's webinar is very much focused on that sort of that environment piece and how that really impacts on disease, health, and then also performance. But it's worth remembering that whatever we recommend here and whatever you find on farm is always going to be that sort of dynamic interaction between the animal itself, but then also exposure to the pathogen. And so when we consider any system, and when we're looking at recommending change on farm, I think it's really important that we think about what we're trying to achieve, understand the team priorities.
I think if we're looking about how do I effect change on farm, and some of the things that I'll talk about today are going to be potentially big changes in management. They may involve investment in terms of buildings, and it's understanding how. We pitch those to a client, how we understand how they, relate to what people currently do, but also tying them back to people's priorities because in doing so, we are more likely to affect change.
We take people on that journey, we address what their concerns and what their needs are. So, what does the calf need from its environment and what are its priorities? Ultimately, it wants to be dry, we want, it needs fresh air, that environment, that building needs to provide controlled air speed, so we want to avoid any draughts at calf level.
. When we come to management procedures, we want those to be able to be undertaken in a stress-free way. And that environment needs to be clean, and similarly, anything that's used in that environment, be that for feeding equipment or handling, also needs to be clean. And on the flip side of that, we need to think about it from what's important for the farm team because if we can make a system or an environment work for the farm team and any procedures that we want to put in place, they're more likely to be adopted and they're more likely to continue to be done.
So that farm team wants a good work environment, ideally, we want it to be easy to clean, because if we make it easy to clean, it's more likely that people are actually going to undertake that cleaning process and make sure it's done as regularly as it needs to be done. That team needs to be able to easily observe the animals. They need to be able to work with those animals, in an easy manner.
And ultimately, if we can provide people with convenience, it makes their life, less stressful. It provides further time, for, for them to undertake other tasks or to focus on other key areas. So if we look at that environment for the calf, what are the 5 key areas that we're gonna consider?
So, we wanna think about temperature. We want to think about moisture and humidity and what's going on with the liquid going into that environment. Air quality Airspeed, and then also that sort of cleanliness and hygiene.
And It's important to think about space allowance and how when we look at a building. We can break a good building by putting too many stock into it. So there again is this sort of dynamic interaction between animals and the buildings that they're in.
So if we put too many animals in a building that was working, with a smaller number, it. We can still get disease and we can still see challenges. It's important to think about what we are doing with space allowances.
So, having conversations with clients about the capability of the farm's buildings is a really easy step to sort of engage with this process. So you start thinking about mapping out. The number of calves that are going to go through a young stock building at any one point.
So for a calf rearer, that may be how many animals he buys in for a dairy herd rearing their replacements. It may be more about how do they handle the numbers of calves coming through, relative to calving patterns. And it's important through those discussions and through review processes such as health planning that Everyone understands the impact of changes in management.
So if the farm is undertaking a change in their calving patterns, so moving from all year round to say block carving. Suddenly Something that is being undertaken for the, the greater good of the business or changing in milk contracts. May make sense for everything else, but it's important to understand, suddenly having all their cars all at one time.
Do they have enough infrastructure to deal with that? Do the, do the buildings that were traditionally working well have the capability to, house the number of calves that they're now going to be seeing coming through? The overall number's going to be the same, but we're in a situation with a changing calving pattern where suddenly that same number may be coming through on a block carving herd in a much more shorter period of time, so suddenly that concentration of animals really increases.
And alongside that, they may be thinking about things like disease challenges. So, TB restrictions can provide a significant challenge to a number of farms if we, they're unable to move hubs off a unit because of movement restrictions, and it's understanding and having in place contingencies for how that would be managed, and how that can be addressed. And.
When you look into the literature, when you look into guidelines from government or from farm assurance bodies, there's lots of different sort of numbers put out there for space allowance, and it's remembering that difference between the minimum, the minimum required versus what's optimum for performance and. Driving your clients to providing more space is generally going to be, and lead to better performance. And this table here demonstrates some of that sort of difference that we see between basic standards outlined by red tractor, versus RSPCA Freedom Foods in terms of that sort of area and space allowance in, in terms of metres square per head.
So you take a, a calf, that's 50 kg and red tractor, the expectation is that that calf has 1.5 metres squared of space versus under RSPCA Freedom Foods, the expectation with that calf has access to 3.3 metres squared of space.
So, a big difference between the two, Two systems there and probably the argument is that we should be moving closer to that higher value and certainly what we've seen recently with the grant funding opportunities where there is money being made available for farms to invest in buildings and being supported by the government. The tendency is to drive improvement in the industry and look towards giving that higher base allowance, so closer to that 3.3 metres square.
And the photo on here. Of the digit digital sort of tape measure. Is included because space allowance is a really nice objective way of measuring what's going on on farm, and I think sometimes when I chat to vets or I chat to farmers, it's how do you make a report about how do I improve space allowance, how do I improve the environment on farm, and taking the time to measure out a shared.
Walking it through with people to look at exactly how, how many carbs of what size can fit in what area is a really easy step to go provide guidance on, to your clients on what should happen. So, cheap digital, tape measures, that can be picked up online for. Next to nothing, they're a really useful tool for being able to rapidly measure out a building, provide you with space and size and dimensions, and you can then give true guidance as to right.
In this area, you would expect this number of calves to be in of this number of size. And so it's a really good to, tool to start getting objective numbers that you can provide guidance around. One of the key things that we need to consider, in calves and the impact that the environment has on them, is what it does to the energy utilisation within that animal.
So for any animal. And especially young animals, what we're doing is we're providing A packet of energy. They're providing them with a set number of calories if they're on a restricted system, on an ad lib system, they're going to be more, they've got that opportunity to increase their calorific intake.
But on a restricted system, we're providing them a set number of calories a day, and that calorie package is going to be divided into . Sort of parcels and sort of used in different ways and to look at it in very general terms, we've got a portion of that's going to be used just for the sort of general maintenance of bodily functions. Will be used for keeping warm.
Some of the energy will be used for, fighting disease and that ongoing immune system. And then the rest of it is used for growth. And we go back to what our original aims are, is that we're very much looking for efficiency, we're looking to drive growth within an animal, but we want as much of that energy going towards as growth as possible.
So if we Take an animal and then put it into a cold environment. What we're ending up doing is changing how that energy packet is utilised. If we've got.
Set amount that's gonna be used for maintenance, that's not gonna necessarily change, but if we've got an animal in a cold environment, more energy is going to be, used for keeping warm. It's unwell, we'll use more energy to, fight disease, and that then just leaves less and less energy for growth, so we get that negative impact on performance. So as we go through and look at the environment and how it impacts on the disease, it's important to remember this sort of what, what the changes to that environment do.
If I'm doing anything to make that environment cosier for a car to avoid energy loss. Inadvertently, what I'm ending up doing is helping that animal stay healthy, minimise the chance of disease, but also ensuring that the maximum amount of energy can be used for growth. And We think about culture and environmental monitoring, .
Anything where we're trying to truly understand anything, it's useful to be able to measure it and, simple tools, just a. A visual LCD thermometer on the wall of a calf shed, or if you want to have something more permanent sort of in actually around where the calves, you can use data loggers or things like that. What they allow us to do is track the temperature with a calf building, and we can then.
Either put in place recommendations about what to do if temperature drops below a certain temperature, but it can also be used for that discussion with clients as to, Perhaps a shed isn't providing as much protection as we would like. So, we could, if we've got cutoffs, think about how do I get clients to, Act if that temperature falls below a certain point, and it may be a case that we're then looking at providing additional heat, although that's quite costly for calf systems, so we do have people starting to put in the ports linear heaters and things like that, but it's an expensive process to often heat large calf barns, but we could look to provide. Increased energy from from feed, so increasing the amount of milk powder we're giving to calves, can help stem that, or at least mitigate the impact of reduced, temperature.
But we could also take steps to reduce heat loss, so that things, using things like calf jackets or thinking about deployment of extra bedding. Providing extra shelter, so that actually we are making sure that the calf is protected as much as we possibly can from those lower temperatures. And whatever we're doing, it's important to remember the sort of the concept of the sort of lower critical temperature.
So the lower critical temperature is ultimately the temperature below which an animal must burn extra energy to keep warm, i.e., that concept of feed being channelled away from growth and production to just maintaining body heat.
And to put in perspective for a Young calf on milk, that lower critical temperature will be in the, somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees, depending on exact age and size of the animal, but then also, prevailing conditions. But that gives some context as to those young calves are very sensitive to temperature and especially within the UK's sort of normal temperature range. So as we're getting into autumn and throughout winter, likelihood is.
That all calves within the UK are going to be cold and therefore we potentially should be taking steps to mitigate that, the impact of that temperature. It's also important to remember, for certain times of the year that there is an upper critical temperature, and at which point the animals will start getting stressed, and I think we are increasingly, seeing, times of the year when we, see temperatures creep up to that point, and it's important to think about how a building or acts in those, in those circumstances, or what steps plants can take to look after the animals. So, what else can we do to minimise heat loss, said, said before the importance of deep bedding and.
When you're looking at a calf environment, it's important to remember the impact that the building materials will have on how a building will function. So, there is a tendency to adopt materials such as concrete because they are hardy, they stand up well to sort of farm machinery. They're potentially easy to clean, because you've got that hard, impermeal service surface, but.
The flip side of that is that, unfortunately, concrete has a very low, thermal resistance. And thermal resistance is effectively, the ability of a material to sort of conduct heat away from, something. So if we put a calf onto, straight onto concrete.
That's gonna lose a lot of energy, a lot of heat, very rapidly, because the, the concrete's got a low value of thermal resistance, and so the energy will wick very quickly away from the car, so. It's important where we've got concrete floors. That we're keeping them dry, and if we are, and we're also then making sure that we've got deep straw beds on, on top of them to ensure that the calf isn't coming in direct contact with the concrete.
And so it's about taking steps to understand those sort of positives and negatives about any buildings that we are, we're involved in the design of or the involved in the management of. And it's when we start looking at sheds. Hey, they may spend a great deal of time cleaning and disinfecting, but it's making sure that when we then prepare to put new calves back in, that we're getting that deep bed to ensure that we've got that insulating layer there.
I'm Ultimately, young calves like to nest, and if you spend time observing calves, they will have a tendency, given the opportunity to . To nest into a straw bed, and again, this is a nice objective tool that you can use when assessing an environment to, Provide feedback on, to clients about how deep a bed can, should be. And nesting score goes from 1 to 31 being the sort of lowest, and this is when off is lying down and the bedding doesn't cover any part of the feet or legs.
So effectively you've got a very compacted head. Calf just lies on the top of it. And, and in that situation, we're not getting any additional value from the bed of providing insulation around higher parts of the calf's body.
It potentially provides insulation between the calf and the base layer of the building, but it doesn't provide additional, insulation. Next step up in the score 2 is the calf is nestled slightly in the bedding. Part of the upper legs are visible and the lower part of the leg is covered by the bedding.
We're getting better, we're providing more insulation to the calf. And the optimum is going to be, we're aiming for that score 3. So we've got deep straw bedding, allows a calf to nest and trap warm air around their body.
So when the calf is lying down, their legs should not be visible. And. That sort of, if you were looking and objectively assessing, a calf shed, having this kind of scoring system really allows you to sort of manage that and communicate much better as to what you'd expect in terms of, the setup in the, in the calf environment.
Everything that we've talked about so far has been very much around the dry environment, but it's important to remember the impact of water. And liquid, to a calf environment and water can come from a number of different places within a calf shed or a calf environment. And it's important to think about how we can mitigate those or how we can build in design features within a building to, to combat them.
So we can see water coming to the environment through leaks, from the calves themselves, actions of the humans, and then also from the weather. And so, when we're thinking about leaks, it's making sure that we are keeping on top of the roof, keeping on top of drain pipes, leaks and water troughs, thinking about. Not putting off tasks like this, because actually the impact of bringing extra liquid into that environment will potentiate disease, facilitate disease spread, but also provide a more stressful environment for the health.
The calves themselves, we, we can't stop them urinating and defecating, but it's understanding that actually we know that drinking behaviour, the carbs are likely to be messy, and they will generate a lot of liquid in and around feed stations or where they, where they're coming together to feed or drink. So it's thinking about how do we mitigate the challenges of liquid in those areas, so having the appropriate slopes and the floors so that they Areas are draining well, not necessarily putting drinkers over beds, putting them on harder standing at the front of pens where it's easy to clean them out or it's easy to get drainage away from them. For the farm team, it's thinking about where are they preparing feeds, where are they cleaning feeding feeding equipment, and what are they doing doing to clean the environment.
One of the major challenges within how an environment works is the humidity, and the last thing we need to be doing on a cold day in a shed which has poor ventilation is adding additional liquid into it. So if we can avoid. Cleaning feeding equipment and putting a lot of wastewater unnecessary into an into actually into the direct calf environment, that's always going to be better.
So having feed prepared slightly separately or in a separate airspace, or at least in an area where it's really well drained, can help minimise the, the potential for additional moisture being added to the environment. And similarly, the weather where building design comes in, and it's thinking about how do we stop, rain, snow, those exterior sources of moisture coming into a shed, but that, of course, needs to be balanced with the need of the animal for fresh air and in terms of combating disease and ensuring that we're not, putting it at risk from disease from that point of view. But it's all about controlling the controllable, and again, if we're seeing these challenges in a calf environment, it's identifying them, talking to clients about them and.
Thinking about solutions, because plants are often looking for that quick fix when faced with the disease. So if we look at scours, they're looking for what medicine can I give, what can I do to, to, to, to mitigate the disease. And absolutely, we can advise on that.
But when we start thinking about, it's important that you look at the environment and think, what can we do to take steps to. Prevent this disease in the future, how do I stop a disease spreading? How do I reduce the stress the environment within the shed is putting on those cards?
Because ultimately, we cannot control the weather, but we can design a shed that's going to protect against it. So if we're seeing water ingress, it's thinking about what can we recommend to stop that water ingress coming in through through rain or snow. We can't stop calves urinating and defecating.
That's part of what they are. That's natural process, but it's how we manage that urine and faeces that's going to be important. We can fix leaks, we can move drinkers and water troughs, we can reduce the amount of .
The water we add to the environment. So when we're thinking about what we do in terms of cleaning, disinfection, management of sort of feeding machines, and feeding equipment, we can reduce the amount of water that we're putting into the environment. And when we design sheds, we can think about how we put in drainage systems to make sure that we're not getting build up of liquid within them.
So it's important to think about that potential for investing in drainage. So think about where we're sighting the sources of water. So troughs, milk machines, feed prep areas, making sure we've got adequate drainage around those, having proper slopes in floors, so when concrete's going into sheds, think about how we can dra.
Encourage drainage off beds and off areas where there is going to be liquid pooling and making sure we've got a sufficient drain open the floor to allow that liquid to move away. But also building in management procedures, so regular cleaning out and ensuring that we've got somewhere away from the shed for that liquid and that slurry and that waste to go to. So when we're designing sheds, thinking about what the farm is going to do with that slurry and that, .
Runoff and that it's managed appropriately. When we consider the calf environment, the other thing that always comes to mind is good ventilation, and the importance of ventilation is across a number of different factors. So we need that good ventilation to remove excess heat, to remove excess water vapour, remove the pathogens, dusts, and gases in that environment, so pathogens that are being breathed out by animals, dusts.
That are generated by bedding processes coming off the bedding itself and then gases either from, Slurry or from the animals, we ideally want that ventilation to provide a uniform distribution of air, and we want to avoid draughts at calf level, so we want it to provide a correct air speed and. Why do we want fresh air and that fresh air is so important because fresh air is such a sort of almost natural disinfection in terms of . Airborne particles and airborne pathogens.
So if we, if we've got good ventilation. What we have is that when pathogens are breathed out by sick animals or healthy animals carrying those pathogens, in fresh air, actually, those pathogens will not survive longer than about 1.5, 2 hours.
But if we're in an environment where the ventilation is poor, we're not getting the fresh air, we've got a buildup of humidity, those pathogens will last and survive a lot longer, meaning they're more likely to alight onto another animal and be breathed in, and therefore, we're perpetuating that spread of disease. We also have that challenge where Things like dust and gases will have a negative impact on the respiratory health of an animal, reduce the effectiveness of their immune sort of systems there to fight respiratory disease and therefore make them more likely to pick up disease. So, on a visual assessment, what can we do?
So look out for signs of poor ventilation, so. Going back to scoring systems and I say I'm a big fan of these, because I think what they allow you to do is provide true guidance to someone. You can, it's much easier to get people to understand exactly what you're referring to, or you can monitor what it was like today and then come back and objectively look at it after changes have been made.
So, scoring system there for the sensory evaluation of dust and ammonia and livestock housing. Going from a score 1 to a score 40 being the odour and dust are not noticeable, and easy to breathe. So score 1, we've got going up to a score 2, where you've got odour and dust are hardly noticeable and you can breathe without the effort.
We then get into a point with score 3s where actually the odour and dust is distinct. You potentially experienced watery eyes and or coughing, so it's almost your physical assessment of how that environment is making you feel. And the, in the worst situation we get to that score 4, where the odour and dust are irritating to the point that you potentially experience stinging in the eyes and or mouth.
And excessive coughing and sneezing. And these are things that when we're looking at respiratory health and we're looking at how do we control pneumonia, it's important to, think about how we communicate to our clients and, and get them to improve. We're looking for visual assessments.
Look out for signs that air is not moving in the shed. So Bob Webb's condensation building up on the roofs of sheds, and then tiger stripes, which is sort of, you may not see the condensation itself, but if you look at sort of, wooden, wooden cross members, you may see, staining where we've got trails of water, going down it, and that's sort of leaving that sort of staining and sort of it's like, and some sort of de scripted tiger stripe. So these are all signs of poor ventilation and you couple those with what you're seeing clinically, so outbreaks of disease, poor performance.
Then you then go, right, this is the justification of the need to sort of look further at how do we improve that environment. And When we consider ventilation, it's always going to be all about inlets and outlets. The inlet is where that fresh air is coming from.
We always want to aim to get about 4 times as much inlet as we have outlet, and. It's really important that we don't rely on opening and closing doors. I think the tendency is people sort of go, oh, I can leave this door open.
And yes, that's a great way of adding additional ventilation, but we need that shed to still provide fresh air when it is, everything is battened down in the, in the face of sort of poor weather and So, it's important that there's fresh air available at all times. And when we start considering buildings and the shapes they're at, especially when we've got long thin buildings, it's really important that we don't rely purely on the gable ends. They will allow some fresh air, and they're a useful addition, but that fresh air's not gonna travel all the way into the centre of a long shed.
So try and make sure that we've got, ventilation down the long sides as well. And overall, We need fresh air coming in, but we don't need to make sure we have got that correct air speed for calves, so making sure we're avoiding draughts at calf level. When we consider the outlet, rough guidance, and there is sort of exact figures will be modified by stocking density and roof pitch, but we're looking for about 0.04 metres squared per animal up to 100 kg, and then that rises up to a 0.1 metre squared for growing stock.
If you want to put that into approximation for a young calf under a 100 kg, that probably. Looks like we need about a 20 centimetre gap in the roof of the shed. The Challenge you have is that we make that gap in the roof wider, we've got more risk of water ingre ingress, so it's about how do I balance that or how do I provide outlet that's protected.
And I think it's important to remember and challenge farms because we still unfortunately see a lot of cranked bridges being put on there, which people are sold on the pretence that it provides an outlet, but actually the outlet provided by a cranked ridge is nowhere near what is required for for the stock within it. So looking more closely at inlet, it's all about providing that constant supply of fresh air. We must enable fresh air to enter, but also provide protection against water ingress.
So, protection against winds, but then also the rain or snow that that may bring with it. And. What we want to see is that ultimately we are enabling.
4 air changes an hour in winter is an absolute minimum, and then rising to about 60 air changes an hour in summer, so, we need plenty of fresh air coming into a shed and there's lots of different . Materials that can be used for sort of sheds and sort of people talk about space boarding and Yorkshire boarding and the, the diagram there's just there for clarity because I think there's often a lot of Miscommunication or sort of mislabeling of space boarding being referred to as Yorkshire boarding, so space boarding is that single line of panels. Allows air in, but then also doesn't provide a huge amount of Protection from the weather, whereas Yorkshire boarding has got one line, line of panels then overlaid by another with the gaps in between.
And so because it's staggered, we still get the air coming through, but it provides more protection against the weather. So more likely to be used where we are and got sides of a building facing into prevailing winds. Table there, provides some sort of guidance as to when we look at different materials, how much void is there?
So how much air can flow through it. And you take things like gabreaker and those sort of standard sort of green sheets that we often see on a lot of buildings providing sort of air, air in, about 25% of that is void. So that gives you an idea if you're trying to calculate how much inlet you're getting, that's the sort of the figure.
It's 25% of that, . That space is given over to our. And We can do lots of calculations, but also think about what the animals are telling you.
And so observing them, are they cuddling in certain areas? Are they avoiding draughts? Are they making best use of the space?
And photo on the left here shows a shed that was farmer was struggling a lot with pneumonia and animals getting stressed post weaning, and you can see where they're sort of huddling away from that open gate, and we see people often rush to. Increase the air inlet into sheds when they've got outbreaks of pneumonia, but the challenge is that if we put it at calf level, they then actually get stress and it can potentially add further problems. So it's making sure that we avoid that draught at calf level.
So simple change in that shed was just to sheet that gate or put some bales in front of it to prevent air coming in at calf level. And ideally we see. More of the image that we see on the right-hand side where where animals are spaced out, they're making best use of the environment.
When we talk about draughts and air movement, it's all about air speed, and I think if we're looking to measure it objectively, simple tool like an anonometer, and we can provide a quick and easy measurement of actually what the air speed is. And so if you're looking to objectively assess buildings and say, actually, yeah, there is a draught down there, or again, you can pick them up online for 1015, 20 quid, and it provides you. A reading that you can then have a conversation with clients about.
Always make sure that you're putting yourself at calf level. I think the tendency is that we talk about ventilation, leaning on a leaning on a gate, looking into a pen, but think about where, where the calf lies. So looking under doors, at their calf level, because that's where we really need to provide the protection.
The target in calf sheds is ideally we've got it less than 0.2 metres per second, and there's loads of cost effective, simple solutions to that. So, on the photo there in the sort of, you can see quick solution to draughts under under the sheeted gates, it's just attaching some rubber quarry belting.
Works really quickly, doesn't impede the door opening or closing, stops the draught, and eliminates that completely. But then the other thing to think about that then provides an additional barrier for wildlife. So if we're looking to control other diseases such as TB, this is a great way of sort of stopping wildlife such as badgers entering sheds.
So, things that can improve the environment from a airspeed, . Sort of investment can also have rewards elsewhere. We're increasingly seeing positive pressure ventilation systems going into calf sheds, and I'm not gonna spend a huge amount of time going over this within this webinar, but they are .
Really useful tools, cost effective ways of delivering controlled fresh air into buildings. So the aim of these is to betterly that a tube allows a fan fitted on the outside of the building to drive there throughout the length of the building. So we then have holes in that tube, pretty much sort of that just in that bottom part of it just so it allows air to to enter into the shed and be delivered along the entire length.
So great way of bringing fresh air in. Avoids draughts at calf level, you run it relatively slowly, so we, the, the aim would be as if you were stood underneath that tube, that you would be aware of the air movement above you, but it's not blasting out of that. We're not trying to kill the animal with it, it's just about bringing that fresh air in.
And the position of the holes and fan will be determined a little bit by the building, and there are courses available to look at, and go into that in much more detail. And don't underestimate the impact they can have a tube system, 1500, 2000 pounds, will significantly improve the environment in a lot of sheds. But don't be afraid of thinking about needing to potentially put a couple of tubes in, especially if you've got wider sheds, where you want to get, fresh air in and.
Ideally, what you want them set up is that they're delivering that fresh air where the calves are gonna spend most of their time, so think about putting that over bedded areas or and making sure that they've got fresh air where they're gonna lie most of the time. We said at the beginning that ultimately, we can have a great building, but we can break it with a number of, number of different things. So by overstocking it.
And I think that the same goes for hygiene and biosecurity. So, it's important to remember this as a key step in disease prevention, and it does. Unfortunately require time, effort and commitment.
So when you're working with your clients, think about what their disinfection protocols are. It's so easy just to put in a health plan, or cleanse and disinfect after, after calves move out or if you have a, a case of infectious disease. But be specific about it.
Think about what the frequency of the cleaning is, what product. Are they going to be using? Have we addressed all the pathogens of concern, and especially when we're considering young stock, where we're making sure that we're trying to use something that's gonna be effective against protozoal pathogens?
Ensure that we're, they're using the correct concentration, that they're giving the shed enough time to dry and. Taking that and breaking it down to stepwise process, you suddenly realise it's quite an undertaking to clean out capital sheds, and I think we often underestimate that, but also by providing clients with step by step guidance on what that looks like. Where it means that the effort that they go to doing it is more likely to beat the rewards.
There's nothing more frustrating than for clients when they, you, you say cleanse and disinfect, they go in, but they haven't taken up, taken out all the manure. They've thrown around potentially the right disinfectant, but at the wrong concentration, and suddenly they're still seeing an issue. Done correctly, this is a really key step in terms of minimising disease spread and reducing challenge on farm, and you, you only have to look into the pig and poultry sector as to how they manage better with these sort of large numbers coming through all in all out systems and the advantage that brings.
And it is thinking about when the buildings have a break, and this can be especially challenging on all year round carving herds, where there's always that stream of calves coming through, and it's thinking about how do we disinfect and keep on top of the hygiene for the majority of the year, but at what stage do we have that point where we can properly take from the shed, but fully cleanse and disinfect it. And it may be a case that you look to include periods during the So at least we've got time to, properly cleanse and disinfect and break some of that disease transmission site. I mentioned previously that importance of thinking about how we control coxidosis and crypto and Right, disinfectants, and there are a number out there, and the key thing is we're getting clients to invest in the correct ones.
I think the tendency is if they're not given guidance, they will potentially cut corners and they won't necessarily ask for the right products. So looking for something that has is irriidal, so. Products such as Keaco, Neopredasan, oxin, and the hydrogen peroxide, all these products.
Us at the correct concentration will have been demonstrated to be effective against the crypto, which will be major challenges on a lot of CAP units. And remember it's cleaning and disinfection. So think about how you walk your your clients through that process, making sure that they're taking all the stock and the muck out, that they're washing those pens and fencing with a detergent to lift off.
And rinsing and allowing to dry and then we're bringing in that disinfectant protocol on top of it. So it is understanding it does. With our clients is not the most sexy of topics, but I think it's one area where .
I think increasingly our clients are looking for guidance from us as to how we can do it, product choice. When we consider how do I reduce disease from things like scour. It is top notch in terms of that biosecurity and that cleanliness is a key step in terms of reducing that disease challenge and therefore reducing the need for treatment long term.
And if we look again across at, our colleagues in sort of pig and poultry, there would be much more rigorous engagement this and potentially, there would be systems where they would be testing the effectiveness and cleaning and long term it's whether or not you should be doing that more regularly in the cattle and, . Industry as well, to making sure that actually we are using cultures to really sort of assess that we are getting getting sheds, cleaned and disinfected before we put new stock into them. The other thing, and to really focus on, and often where we see problems coming into calf, calf systems, is that management of feeding equipment and it sort of builds on from biosecurity and sort of in that sort of aspect of hygiene, and it's thinking about how does feeding equipment, contribute to potentially the route of disease transmission.
And so having clear cut protocols for as to what they're doing in terms of their feeding equipment, I think is really important. And showing an interest in this and asking them to walk you through the process is really important. It's a topic that often they haven't necessarily had any formal training in, it's just been done how it's always been done.
I tend to find that often the dairy farms are a bit better, . Set up in this for them, some of the the cars because they're used to managing parlours and how they've got the chemicals around, they've got the hot water around the properly clean, feeding equipment, but it's not always the case, and I think, spending time, especially if you're seeing scour outbreaks or you're looking to optimise those sort of, systems, it's going through with them looking at feeding equipment immediately after it's being cleaned. Are there areas of it that are being missed like we've got in this sort of central picture here?
What's happening to feeding equipment once it's been cleaned, I think that even mine is when you sort of go on to farm and you you see things that are being cleaned, but then they're then placed into dirty environments where they're gonna get contamination, before they're used again. And so if you think about it in terms of sour outbreaks, something like that is going to be a key, key step in terms of how do I address that. And So getting people to walk you through that system, provide a protocol, what are they doing for the cleansing.
So, always rinse with warm water, so 32 to 38 degrees. We want to rinse that sort of milk off it. If we put a cold water on, or we put really hot water on, we're likely to sort of congeal fats and sort of create biofilms.
So just a warm rinse to start with, then having a detergent, with a hot water to make sure. Then potentially using another disinfectant on top. And allowing that equipment to dry properly, in a clean environment.
So having the potential for racks, so that we've got air movement and that we're not sort of just placing things one on top of the other, because we put one bucket on top of another, on top of that, and we then just get that sort of cooling effect where the bottom bucket ends up with sort of the residual materials in it, whereas actually you see on the left photo having. The quick installation of a number of screws or something to hang buckets on can really help that process, so. Making sure that you're looking at that environment as a whole, but then thinking about how do my hygiene and management processes fit into this, and I think taking time to speak to whoever's doing the feeding and getting getting to grips with what their processes are can be really invaluable for any kind of engagement, process or looking at how do you make improvements on young stock.
And it's thinking about all the possible crossovers. I think this is a classic question I always ask when you're chatting to people, it's going right. Where else has my feeding equipment or stomach tube being used for?
Because we've got two at-risk categories. We've got calves that we are newly born, that we may end up using bottles to, feed colostrum or stomach tubes to feed colostrum, and then we have the sort of sick calf with scours, we may be using a stomach tube or a bottle to feed electrolytes. And what we've got there is that potential crossover.
From a very sick animal, if it's not managed properly, that actually, that stomach tube or that, tube feeder or that teat and bottle is then being used on a calf with, which we already acknowledge has very low, low immunity. So, and it's that risk there. So getting people to think about how they clean things, how they're managing that, or potentially having.
Different designated feeding equipment that they still clean and maintain properly, but, it just encourages people to think about it. We're increasingly seeing milk machines and these automatic car feeders, on a lot of carfeing systems, and when we're thinking about hygiene around them, it's about reducing disease risks, maintaining intakes, and making sure we're ensuring proper function. Make use of the in-built cleaning cycles, but it's important that they're regularly manually cleaned as well.
I would always recommend following the manufacturer's guidelines on the detergent, but generally strong alkalines work best. It's important to check all hoses and rubble workers, these are the classic places for bacteria build up and trying to build in again that kind of full clean between batches, it's about when do people have time to properly rest and clean things, it's really important. And I think sometimes it's about that kind of it paints 1000 words and always looking the environments over what's going on.
And so this is how the environment around the, the teat on a milk machine and you just go, what's the risk in that situation of disease transmission, but then it's also what's the potential, for impact on the intakes, because you know what, that's not going to help encourage a calf to come into feed. So, . Challenging in, in a professional way, our clients around this and sort of, hey, if you're writing reports and getting people to try and make changes, taking photos like this, you suddenly go, right, there's no, there's no subjectiveness to it.
This is what it is, you know what, it's probably not as good as we would like it. And there are studies out there that really demonstrate the importance of cleaning and the environmental management, so this study . Looked at the prevalence of diarrhoea and respiratory disease in farms using automated milk feeders, and they found that factors associated with scours with, and that if you increase the regular regularity in which you're cleaning the system, so more than 3 times a day, you reduce the risk of scours and goes without saying and not really unexpected that ultimately milk with a high bacterial load was associated with increased scours.
So that importance of hygiene and When it started considering respiratory disease, thinking about drainage, so wet bedding increased the risk of these, and then increasing the risk of increasing the frequency of bedding up reduced the risk of disease, so. Things that we always know, but probably we're just needing to objectively point out, but then also come up with solutions about how we can actually achieve them. And Going back to this common theme that I've been using throughout this presentation about this sort of objective way of assessing, there is a visual assessment there for cleanliness, so score 1 to 4, and bearing about whether or not they have milk colostrum contamination or faecal material, and it's a good way of just sort of going, right, it's a quick assessment, but providing guidance to clients going from, equipment being visibly clean to actually visible manure contamination, and you just go, right.
Making sure people start taking ownership for it and expect . Leading into proper expectations. And I think it's interesting you can start using analogies about what would you do for keeping, Feeding, feeding equipment clean for a newborn human and if for anyone with families, they often will start going, oh right, yeah, that makes more sense, and drawing those analogies really helps people to understand the importance of cleanliness and hygiene.
And increasingly we're seeing technology deployments, so on top of the visual inspection, we could do bacteria monitoring and culture, but that carries with it a time delay. So, certainly a number of people are now using ATP, . Monitors and this is borrowed from the food industry and ultimately ATP is a molecule involved in the energy transfer for metabolic processes and cells, so the swab, swabbing areas sort of, after, after cleaning, and that look visually clean, then there's a reaction in the tube and then creates bioluminescence, which then a reader can measure and that allows us to provide a sort of objective numerical value and we can, there's guidance out there as to how that could be .
Interpreted, but certainly, . Looking at less than say 100 light units per is sort of would be the target and people will be getting much lower than that, but can be a really nice objective way of getting the system, systems monitored effectively. And Don't underestimate the impact of isolating sick animals.
I think it's, it's some some things that can often it takes people to be reminded to do. So, but it is a key step in reducing disease spread. They think about what facilities, the farms have and when are they readily available, what's their location, provision for feeding water, and how are they cleansed and disinfect.
Simply putting hurdles around a calf inside a larger group is not isolation, and I think it's important that we challenge our clients on that and make sure they understand what we're trying to achieve. We, it's a, and it's not just about that physical separation. We also need to consider that potential for disease spread on equipment and also team mentality.
And that then leads into how are we managing visitors and staff movements and. Both to the farm and to the calf housing, I think actually the calf units, we can start thinking of them as sort of almost biologically distinct units to some degree, and we can look at how do I prevent spread of disease from those calf units out to the rest of the farm or vice versa, and it's sort of establishing some protocols that can really help. So, What are we doing to manage external visitors and then what are we doing with the internal team and thinking about whether it's just foot tips or separate overalls, or even just getting people to wear gloves whilst they're handling calves or working with the feeding equipment can just help them taking steps to control some of the common diseases feet.
And But depths Great at the entrance into calf houses and sort of properly used through the farm, but making sure that they are regularly topped up, they're not getting diluted if they are left uncovered, and that the boots are cleaned first. So thinking about how we're washing boots before they're going into the foot tip, because the last thing we need to do is put a lot of mud or manure in there because again, it will rapidly deactivate and make them ineffective. And goes back to the cleansing and disinfection, having a conversation and making sure people are using the correct product and the correct concentration.
So, this has been a bit of a whistle stop tour, but hopefully we've provided some key areas to look at in terms of optimising the environment for calves, so. We're looking to provide the correct temperature. We want to manage moisture effectively.
We want to ensure those calves are getting fresh air, and we want to eliminate draughts at calf level. So we want air coming in, but we don't want it to be disruptive, and that we want to ensure that we've got the appropriate biosecurity and appropriate cleansing and disinfectant protocols. So hopefully now, having completed this webinar, you've now got a better understanding of the key role the environment plays in calf health and performance.
You could go away and objectively assess calf environments on farm and hopefully provide practical advice on how to improve the calf environment. We've also talked about how to assess hygiene and biosecurity and the importance of providing written guidance to your clients, and it's, it's doesn't have to be anything complicated, but it's about thinking about what are those stepwise processes in that cleansing and disinfection protocol. Either be that for a building, be that for feeding equipment or personnel as they're moving.
So thank you very much for your attention, and I will end that.