Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us for tonight's BCVA webinar. My name is Sarah Peterson from the BCVA board, and I'll be chairing the webinar tonight. Our speaker Phil is happy to remain online for questions, so please type any that you may have in the Q&A box during the webinar, and I'll save them for the end of the presentation.
If you have any technical difficulties, then we have Rob from Webinar vet on hand to help, so please let us know of any problems by using the Q&A box as well, and we'll do our best to assist you. If you can't see the Q&A box, then if you wiggle your mouse on your screen, it should become visible at the bottom of the screen. So it's my pleasure to introduce fellow BCBA board member Phil Elkins as our speaker tonight.
Phil graduated in 2005 from Edinburgh University and since then has spent the majority of his time in clinical practise in Cornwall. Phil's main interest is in dairy production and holistic management. He also gained his certificate in advanced veterinary practise in 2015 and has been a member of the BCVA board for the last 4 years.
So tonight, Phil will be taking us through transition health monitoring and management. Over to you, Phil. Thanks, Sara, and thank you all for joining us.
Hoping that, all of you are really appreciating the hard work that BCVA are putting into these webinars as a member benefit. So yeah, I'm gonna be covering transition health monitoring and management. And I suppose what I'm trying to do is just to get you guys to, to potentially think a little differently.
Go to challenge you and, and to, to see whether the way you're approaching things is necessarily the right way. Not going to give you a blueprint for what you should and shouldn't do, but just some, some hints and tips that, that I've learned from, from my time working with dairy clients. So, what is the transition period?
So the transition period refers to the process of a late gestation cow becoming an early lactation cow. So we've got a large number of physiological changes going on here. So we've got, the other going from a, from a dry udder to, to one producing milk.
We've got at least one diet change. Sometimes there can be 3 or 4, depending on the systems. We've got at least a doubling of energy requirements to, to produce that milk.
Massive alterations in mineral metabolism so that homeostatic mechanisms kicking in to make sure that blood levels of certain key, key minerals such as calcium are maintained at the right level. We've got some sociophysiological effects. So we've got group changes going on, which can have physiological effects within the body as well.
And then we've got challenges to the, the immune system, both from a local aspect and a systemic aspect. Now what we term the the transition period, I think that it's fairly widely accepted at the moment. What we, we talk about is 60 days pre-carving to 30 days post-carving.
Now I'm not fussed where those, where those parameters are set. The reason they're set there is because there's some evidence that changes that, that are made within that time period can have fairly large knock-on effects throughout lactation. Some people talk about.
6 weeks pre-carving to 30 days post- carving, I think ultimately what we're talking about is the drier period and the transition to a milking cow ration. So why is the dry period so important? So here's your first quiz question of the day.
What proportion of dairy cow disease occurs in the transition period? So this is coming from, Stevie Blanc's work. So we've got options of 35, 50%, 65, or 75%.
So you should all now have the poll questions that's popped up on your screen there. All of this is anonymous, so don't worry about if you're not sure having a guess. So we've got 2/3 of voted now, so I'm just gonna give you a couple more seconds to decide before we close it.
OK, so closing it there. So, most popular answer with 65% was, oh, sorry, no, most popular answer was C, which was 50% of the audience, and went for C, 36% for D 75%, and then 8% for B and 6% for A. So C was our most popular answer with 50% of the votes.
So yeah, the, the third of you who went for option D, got it right. So 3/4 of all dairy cow disease is related to transition health and comes in the transition period. That's why this is such an important period for us to get involved in as vets.
So here's just some examples of some of the diseases we're talking about and in incidence ranges. And I suppose the first thing that you notice is when you look at things like clinical mastitis, where we're talking about mastitis in the 1st 30 days, there's quite a wide range there. So we have some farms that are performing excellently and some farms that really have quite poor performance when it comes to, to, mastotitis in particular.
See similar with ketosis, displaced amos and ovarian dysfunction. All of them have a very large range of performance between the good performing herds and the poor performing herds. So, little, little chart, little diagram here.
I hope you can all pay attention because there's going to be some quiz questions on this later. Don't, don't worry, I'm only kidding you. This is just there to demonstrate exactly how complicated the metabolism of the dairy cow is and all the changes that are happening during the transition period.
We have so much going on in this chart. I literally have no idea what 3/4 of it is. I'm sure I got taught it at college, but you don't need to know it.
This is a far simpler demonstration of what we're talking about. So we have a number of major changes going on within major tissue groups. So within the fat tissue, we've got increased lipolysis, so increased mobilisation of fat, decreased synthesis of new fat, decreased uptake of pre-formed fatty acids, and reaserification of fatty acids.
In the room and we're going for a rumen where the size is restricted by the, by the gravid uterus with the foetus in there, all of a sudden has much more room to increase in size. We've got a slight increase in absorptive capacity and a massive increase in the rate of nutrient absorption as a result. In the mammary gland.
We've got a slight increase in the number of secretory cells, but they're much better at using the nutrients and and together with the slight increase in supply of blood, that's how we get massive increases in milk yield. The muscles go from being a, from building up in that dry period to, to actually potentially using them as an energy in a protein source. So decreased utilisation of energy, decreased utilisation of protein, synthesis of protein, but increased degradation to provide amino acids to the body.
And then over to the left hand side, we see a massive increase in the size of the liver to process all that energy, increased rate of glucaniogenesis, synthesis of protein and ketogenesis. So what we're seeing here is a major shift between an animal that is undertaking a really important function, but metabolically a quite simple function in growing a foetus to one that is producing vast quantities of milk. So where do we see transition failures?
Ultimately, there are 3 main classes of biological failure around transition failures of energy metabolism, calcium metabolism, or immunity. And every issue that we see around transition health comes down to at least one of those 3. And the reason I say at least one of those three again is they're all inter interlinked.
So a solid line on this chart demonstrates a proven association, and a dotted line is a tentative association to a P value over 0.5. And the first thing to say is the presence of milk fever is strongly correlated with immune suppression and negative energy balance.
The three, as much as their separate biological functions are all interrelated. And there are really strong correlations between individual diseases as well as those individual kind of body systems. So for example, if we look at masti, yeah, if, or retained placenta, strong link with ketosis, for example, ketosis has a strong link with ovarian dysfunction and displaced abemazin.
There, there are strong correlations between different diseases. So just looking at that from a different side, if we just look at calcium metabolism, for example, and the mechanism by which it's causing disease. So low blood calcium reduced to smooth muscle function.
That reduces smooth muscle function, increases the risk of prolapse, increases the, reduces uterine motility and ror motility and leads to poor teat sphincter closure. All of these then leads to various different diseases, mastitis, ketosis, dystosia, retained membranes, slow involution metritis, poor reproductive function. So you can see how those three failures, so failure of calcium metabolism, failure of energy metabolism, and failure of immunity are all transition stages leading to the clinical diseases, and the clinical diseases we regularly see and we regularly deal with as vets.
So what are these costs? So this is Mike Overton's work looking at an observational study of nearly 160,000 lactations. These are user defined disease rates.
That means this is farmers identifying diseases. This is really important because we know farmers underestimate disease prevalence, and when you underestimate the disease prevalence, what ends up happening is you underestimate the impact as well, because those low level diseased animals that are having reduced performance. Sit in the normal bracket, in the control bracket, and as a result, the effect of their reduced performance is dragging down the performance of the normal animals, whereas they should be in the affected animals and reducing the performance of the affected animals.
So this is looking purely at the financial aspects of milk loss, culling by 60 days in milk and loss through delayed consumption. So there's no impact of disease treatments, vet inputs, culling after 60 days in milk, any of those other things. It's looking purely at specific diseases and looking at those, those kind of secondary losses, as it were.
And what we see is actually some fairly large quantities of losses. So if you look at, so people have been quoting various different figures for the average cost of a case of mastitis for years and 240 to 300 pounds is regularly quoted. When you look at mastitis in the 1st 30 days, actually you, you're well over those figures already just from the secondary losses.
And when you put the primary losses associated with treatment and labour associated with treatment, etc. Actually, those knock-on effects, those costs of disease are far higher. So, if we, if we look at each of the diseases, actually we can see some fairly large costs here and, and the major contributors are milk loss and culling loss by 60 days.
So if we are looking at diseases and we're under underestimating the knock-on effect, financial effect of those milk losses, We're effectively not doing our clients justice by tackling them with with enough vigour. So what is the role of the vet? So you've got to care with the DA, you treat the DA, you've got to care with milk fever, you treat the milk fever.
If you see too many, you advise if there's too many. Well, actually, those, those things are, are kind of givens. They, they should be the bread and butter, and they should be the things that are happening.
But I would challenge us that actually the role of the vet includes monitoring disease incidences. Why should we wait until there's a problem? Why wait until there's enough DA's or milk fevers that we're thinking, Christ is too many?
Why, why not tackle it proactively? Why are we just looking at diseases as well? Surely our role as a vet is to advise on measures to optimise health, welfare, production, and economics.
If I can guarantee you one thing throughout this webinar, it's this. If we don't, as the veterinary industry, start tackling health, welfare, production and economics, there are plenty of other people out there who will. There are plenty of farm consultants, consultancy businesses, nutritional consultants that will want to get involved in these kind of things, and they will effectively try to take over some of the role of the vet on the farm.
So I think there's a real challenge and an opportunity there for us as vets to get involved in this, particularly looking at transition health. So what disease rate should we be monitoring if we're going to monitor transition health? Well, we can, we can monitor the big hitters, your LDA rate, your mastitis rate, your retained placenta, ketosis, milk fever.
The problem with each of these diseases is they're effectively low prevalence diseases. So if we take DAs, for example, people talk about target rate of 2%, 3%. Now if you're a 200 cow herd and you have 1 DA in a month, you've already gone beyond that threshold.
So at what point do you say this is too many and we need to start investigating and doing something differently? OK, mastitis is a bit different with somewhere between a 5% and a 10% target rate. But again, by the time you've noticed changes, actually the scale of the, of the, of the disease and the cost of the disease is far higher than we really ought to be accepting.
So let's go for the high incidence issues. Delay first service, cystic ovarian disease. Should we be monitoring those?
Well, actually they've got an incredibly long lag period. So by the time you start picking up a trend in these issues, the problem was 8, 1012 weeks ago, and actually it's, it then becomes very difficult to investigate what the problem was. So actually, do we have some things that are relatively high incidence of relatively tiny things we can look at?
Yeah, we can look at poli vaginal disease, so clinical ketosis, post calvin calciums, and they're definitely things that should probably be on our agenda. My issue with these is they all have a degree of invasiveness to them. They generally involve taking a blood sample or sticking your arm or a device in a, in a cow's vagina.
Equally they are all relatively labour intensive. They, they're not necessarily that easy to monitor as individual parameters. That's not saying that they're not worth monitoring, and I'll come to that later, but I think in terms of sole measures of transition to success, I don't think they're great.
So, for me, the key point is that all transition diseases are interrelated. So individual disease rates therefore become less useful barometers of success. And actually, what we should be monitoring is not transition failure rate, it's transition success rate.
What we should be looking at is the proportion of cows that transition successfully. It's always better to go to a farmer and say you are successfully managing this proportion of cows than you are failing this proportion of cows. So what is transition success?
And this is probably worth spending a little bit of time defining. So for me, a cow's deemed to have successfully transitioned if she's calved without any dystopia. If she's lasted 60 days in lactation without culling, if she hasn't had meteorittis, perilent vaginal discharge, mastotis, high somatic cell count, LDA retained placenta, hypercalcemia, ketosis, probably an even longer list than that, but any major disease within that 60 days.
If she has returned to normal cyclicity, so has had was by 60 days of milk and an absence of abnormal ovarian structures and is producing suitable milk, I think we would all say that a cow that does that, so has an easy calving, last no disease in the 1st 60 days, returns to normal cyclicity and is producing enough milk, has successfully transitioned. To me, any animal that hasn't done that, hasn't successfully transitioned, and in one way or one way, shape or form, potentially represents a failure in the way that cow's been managed. So why is milk production so important?
I put it as the last thing on the list, but it probably should be the first thing on the list. So when we look at milk production production at first milk recordings, so within the 1st 30 days of milk, for every additional litre of milk that a cow gives or for every additional 1 kg of milk that a cow gives, she will give somewhere between 120 and 143 extra litres of milk by 305 days in milk. Now, as a vetter, you're going to pick up a cow that's 1 litre down on where she should be, of course, you're not.
As a vetter, you're gonna pick up a cow that's 5 litres down on where she should be. Maybe, maybe not. Obviously there's genetic parameters.
Your first lactations are probably harder to, to identify. Computer systems will very easily pick out your second and, and, and more lactations. Are you're going to pick out a cow who's 10 litres back where she should be?
Almost certainly. By the time she's 10 litres back and where she should be. That's over 1000 litres lost that lactation.
That's 300 pounds of lost milk, that lactation. So actually we need to be doing a much better job of monitoring early lactation milk production. So, this is a survival chart looking at the presence of disease versus the absence of disease in the 1st 60 days.
So effectively transition success versus transition failure and the knock-on effect on fertility. So obviously those that have no disease, the red line drops down far quicker on that survival chart, and I just want to pick out a couple of points. If we look at 100 days of milk, so this is looking at days open, so what we would call calving to conception interval.
So if you look at 100 days of milk, buy 100 days of milk, of those cows that have no disease, so transition successfully, 60% of them are in calf by 100 days of milk. For those that have a disease, only 40% of them are in calf by 100 days of milk. That is not even considering those that have been cold in the 1st 60 days because they're excluded from this work.
It's also not considering those that have been voluntarily marked as do not breed in the 1st 660 days. So they're excluded as well. So this is looking at a really large data set in the States, but only using the 25 farms that have an absence of, synchronisation protocol in place.
So using natural heat detection. The other point I want to point out is if you were to say, draw an arbitrary line at 200 days of milk, we're not going to sign, we're not going to serve anything past that. You're looking at an extra 6% coal rate in those that have disease versus those that don't have disease.
So you're automatically losing another 6% of those cows because they have failed to transition, not including those that have been cold out or those that are, that are marks do not breed. Throwing on top of that, the fact that those that have no disease give on average 600 kg more milk. There's 5% more of them last past 60 days anyway.
Average. Day's key is 22 days lower, so 5 pounds per day, if you're going to call it that, you're looking at 110 pounds cost of fertility difference there. Pregnancy risk, 26% versus 21%.
So actually, we can see that the knock-on effects of transition failure last considerably longer than we would potentially consider that they do. So here's a direct quote from one of my clients. When the caves don't transition well, you remember every factor that contributes the twin carvings, the sister carvings, those who didn't move group at quite the right time, so potentially had a short dry period, a long dry period.
When the herd transitions well, you don't notice the caves with excuses. And that to me is the key point. If we can get it right for the herd, every cow will perform better.
And then we can go and help those that need it. I'm not saying we shouldn't be there to, to provide help to the carriers that need it. What I'm saying is we should be there to make sure that every carer has the best opportunity to perform as well as possible.
So how do we monitor transition success? So for smallish herds, actually, I, I quite like old school methods. I quite like you produce a simple table on a sheet of paper, pin it up in the office or in the dairy.
So whenever a cow calves, they record the cow ID and the calving date, and then if she gets any disease in the 1st 60 days, you record which disease is the first one they get and the date of that, and that goes down as a fail. If they have no disease, you put a tick next to it and they succeed. And you just tally them over time.
For larger herds, we can use reporting functions on herd management systems, so we can automate the process. They take a bit of time to set up, but they do make it considerably easier. But the key thing for me is we should be monitoring that at every visit.
And I don't mean if you go out at 3 o'clock in the morning to put prolapse back in. I mean, if you're going out for fortnightly routines, monthly routines, weekly routines, whatever, just make sure you have an awareness of how the transition success is looking since you last went out there. So second question, what percentage of case should transition successfully?
So you've got options 50, 70, 80, or 90%. OK, so for this poll question you should again have the answers that Phil's got there just up on the polling box. So again, it's all anonymous.
OK, so we've nearly got 80% of you that have voted, so we'll just give you a couple more seconds for the last you to. To decide OK, we'll close it there. So we've got a clear winner here, which is D 90% with 59% of the vote.
Then we've got answer C with 31%, then B with 9% and A with 1%. So 59% going for D. So, my second time to apologise, it's a bit of a trick question really, because ultimately what we should be doing is setting a farm specific target.
So industry targets are worth knowing, they're worth understanding, but if you say that you expect 90% of cows to transition appropriate successfully, and you've got a farmer who's only hitting 40%, that's incredibly demotivating. Equally, if you say, I want a target of 60% transitioning successfully, and you've got a farm achieving 90%, well, actually the target's not relevant for them. The data shows that actually those farms achieving 70% transition success are doing a really good job or they're not being honest with themselves.
It's actually pretty unusual to get farms hitting anywhere near 90%, and, and quite often the things they're missing out on are the milk yield and the return to, to, to normal cyclicity. If you imagine on most dairy farms, particularly most kind of semi-intensive or intensive dairy farms, we're seeing as non-cyclers somewhere between 15 to 20% of the herds, so that's 15 to 20% that have failed automatically. In that parameter If you've got 10%, they're getting mastitis, and yes, there will be some overlapping populations, and again on many farms it's much higher than 10%.
It's very quick to, to knock off those 30% of transition failures. So I think perception wise in our head, we think that, that we ought to be able to get this right for every care and every care we ought to be able to, to achieve good transition success. We, we're asking quite a lot of these animals, and we need to be respectful of the fact that we're asking quite a lot of these animals and, and actually, as I say, 70% is, is probably a pretty hard target for a lot of farmers.
So just a little point on targets. I'm sure most of you have heard about smart targets. My personal view is that targets shouldn't be achievable.
They should be nearly achievable. They should almost be just slightly out of reach to help farmers just keep motivating to that next stage. And if they do smash it out of the park and get there, you give them a massive reward for it.
So we just monitor transition success rate, that's the whole point of the talk. Well, I wish it was that simple. Life is never that simple.
Transition success rates are holistic parameters, it looks at everything. And actually, if your transition success rate is, is acceptable, that probably is enough to monitor. If you're getting transition success rates over 70%, certainly if you're getting it at 90%.
Just keeping an eye monitoring that is more than enough. If transition success rate is not good enough, actually, we probably ought to be looking at more. So it's also an output parameter and maybe actually monitoring some of the right inputs can act as an early warning system.
And to look at the right inputs, we need to look at actually what are our transition period goals. What are we hoping for for each cow? We're wanting to minimise the risk of calving difficulties, wanting to minimise the risk of stillborn calves, metabolic diseases, immunocompetence, or minimise the the loss of immunocompetence, sorry.
We want to, allow them to hit high milk production and early lactation, reduce the loss of body condition, and return to normal cyclicity. And ultimately, if we do that, we'll end up with a highly profitable cow because we've ticked the boxes of health and welfare and then we're, we're serving our farmers right. So what factors influence these transition period goals?
Genetics plays a massive influence on them, but actually I'm not going to talk about genetics for one very big reason. It would be a disservice for me to actually spend any time talking about genetics because it's far too big a topic to cover in a 40 minute webinar, let alone in part of a 40 minute webinar. Similarly, infectious disease is absolutely essential.
You can, you can spend as much time as you want looking at various different inputs and outputs, but if you've got raging BVD within a hood, you're never going to get suitable transition success. Similar IVR. So actually infectious disease control is massively important.
I'm just not going to cover it in great depth here. So two big things that that influence transition period goals. We've got dry matter intake and nutritional competency.
And I'm just gonna spend a little bit of time talking about dry matter intake because it's, it, it is massively important. So we've got a study here looking at, dry matter intake in cows that, that either go on and develop metritis. So we're talking clinical cure for matritis here early and so kind of first week of, of lactation versus those that don't.
So post carving, obviously you can see a massive difference in dry matter intake in these animals, which is kind of what we would expect. But the reality is that these issues haven't started at calving time. These animals have had dry matter intake reductions for at least 1 week, probably 2 weeks, and potentially even more prior to calving.
So there is definitely an association with reduction in dry matter intake pre-carving in cows going on to develop metritis. So actually, if you've got issues with meritis, and it's, it's pretty much the same for any transition disease, the, the issues start before calving. They don't start at calving, they, they rarely start after calving.
Getting dry matter intake, high dry matter intake, and sustaining dry matter intake in your pre-calving cows is absolutely key to transition success. So, it takes a bit a while to get your head around this chart. This is looking at 305 day mature equivalent milk yield, as predicted by dry matter intake pre-calving, and this was, I think this was 3 days pre-calving versus actual 305 day mature equivalent milk yield.
And what you find is a really strong correlation. So, going back to what we said earlier, that milk yield is actually the reality is it's an outcome parameter from transition success or failure. Again, that's driven by dry matter intake pre-calving.
Dry matter intake intake drives fertility. So I'm sure we will all have heard multiple times that high yielding cows don't get in calf. So this is looking over, I think it was about 20,000 cows, classifying them as either early ovulators, which means having a, having a detectable heat pre 42 days in milk, and late ovulators, so not having a detectable heat pre 42 days in milk.
And actually, what you find is there's no difference in the milk yields between those two animals, at second test recording date. What you do see is a large difference in dry matter intake at 7 days to pre-carving. So you're looking at over a 20% reduction in dry matter intake for those that then go on to have fertility problems.
Knock-on effect is you get a reduction in dry matter intake, early lactation, less, less pronounced, so, just over 10%. But a massive difference in the amount of body weight that's being mobilised to try and maintain energy status of these animals. So we're looking at this in pounds, so 60 pounds, so 25 to 30 kg difference in the amount of weight that is mobilised to try and sustain metabolism in these animals.
And maintain that milk yield. So. The cows that struggle to get in calf are not the cows that are because they're giving a high milk yield.
They're the cows that have struggled to eat sufficient amounts pre-calving. So this is some unpublished work from looking in New Mexico, where self-locking yolks at the feed barrier in the transition, so the pretty fresh, as they would call it, the transition yard. And it's looking at, average dry matter intake across those two, dairies with a varying number of cows in the pen.
And what you find, which isn't really surprising. Is that as cow numbers reduce dry matter intake increases because it's all about feed availability. And actually, we quite often work in our heads off 100%.
We need to be working off a much lower percent of capacity when it comes to feed availability in dry in dry cases. So looking at that in a different way because I'm sure we've all got clients where you say, oh, you haven't got enough feed availability. Oh, but I've got a cow that's doing X number of litres of milk.
So this is looking at predicted milk yield. This is just from one dairy, one large dairy. So I'm sorry, it's a bit blurry on the, on the X axis, what you've got is, days carved.
So going from 0 out to 300, and you've got predicted lactation milk yield going up the y axis. And what you see on the right hand side is a fairly scattergun approach where you've got some cows up there doing fantastic milk yields, doing really good milk yields, but equally you've got some cows and some heifers down at the bottom doing fairly substandard milk yields. So this farm was running at 120% stocking density in the transition yard.
And 100% stocking density in the fresh cow pens. Built a new barn, reduced their stocking density from down to 85% in the transition yard and 85% in the fresh cow pens 110 days ago. So, you're looking now at the left hand side of the chart, and what you see is, yeah, the cows, there are still some cows producing large quantities of milk, but what you've lost is those underperforming cows.
So perhaps the less socially dominant animals, the ones that, that, if there's limited access to the feed fence, they're the ones that are gonna be suffering in terms of dry matter intake. So similar thing here, we're looking at first test milk production versus stocking density, and this is in straw yards. And what you find is, as soon as stocking density goes over 100%, milk production at the first test reduces and reduces quite considerably.
So by the time you're up around 130%, you've probably lost 3 or 4% of milk yield at that first test milk. And as I said earlier, that has knock-on effects for, for the, for the entire lactation. So dry matter intake's really important, but what can we measure and what can we monitor?
Well, if you can measure dry matter intake, do it. And there are some farms that can. There's some good big units that will measure feed, feed, provided at the feed fence.
They'll measure how much they scrape away the following day, and they'll have a food dehydrator or aota tester so they can test the dry matter of that, of that feed as well. And they'll be monitoring. Those dry matter intakes, certainly on a weekly basis, some of the bigger units may be more frequently than that.
If you can't, let's measure the inputs that drive dry matter intake. Let's measure stocking density. So I think we should all have as vets have an idea of what the maximum stocking density is in the transition yards for our clients.
So calculate it based on 10 centimetres of water per head, 90 centimetres of feed space, or 85% occupancy if they're in yolks, 15 metres per square per car loose house. And usually we'd expect something like 10 metres square bedded area, 5 metre square feed area, 85% occupancy of cubicles. So work out which is the restricting factor within that building.
If it's something you can do something about to increase, so if you can stick in another water trough, then yeah, by all accounts do it. But work out what's the maximum stocking density of that shed and write it down somewhere. It doesn't matter where it is, get, get some stock marker and spray it on the wall in the middle of the transition shed, maximum 20 cows.
And then every time you go there, just go and count how many cows are in there. Because we all know that farms don't operate at, at kind of flat level calving rates. There are peaks and troughs.
And if you go in there and you look every time, you're going to have a fair idea of what's going to happen down the line because if that stocking density gets over that maximum, you're going to start to see problems. So just a quick bit here on dry period length. Because it is a, it is a really important input.
We split dry period length into low, normal or high, so normal being 45 to 70 days, low, less than that high, more than that, obviously. What you see is for cows that, either have a short or a long dry period, there's knock-on effects on the amount of milk that they produce the following lactation, pure and simple. So you're looking at just shy of 1000 litres, about 800 litres for those that have short dry periods.
So avoiding short dry periods is a massively important thing. And you're looking at a small reduction of about 150 litres for those that have long dry periods, usually because those are the animals that have either struggled to get in calf and are carrying excess weight, or because your dry period rations got too much energy, so they gain weight during that time period. Which leads nicely into nutritional competency.
So having a, a dry period of ration that is fit for purpose is massively important, and I think again, I think it's an area where vets really need to be engaging. So, what does that mean? So some fairly basic rule of thumb guides here.
If we feed a high energy ration to pre-calving cows, you will reduce the dry matter intake because the cows don't need that much of it, so they won't eat that much of it. We'll also increase overconditioning and have all the problems with fat deposition in the liver and the knock-on effects in the following lactation. Low dry matter intake, we know reduces milk yield, increases disease.
So what we need is a low to moderate energy diet with particularly high palatability for the close-ups. So, the reason I say low to moderate is effectively, the further away they are from carving, the lower their energy requirements and the more you can get away with a low energy diet. But you do need a reasonable quantity, a moderate energy density as you get closer to carving.
So those room and bugs are ready to start, operating at full tilt post carving. As, as vets and there's a, there's a number of nutritionists as well out there, we quite often forget the impact of metabollizable protein. So as you increase the quantity of metabolizable protein available to heifers, in particular, you see increases in milk yield and reduces reductions in disease until you hit 1.1 kg of metabolizable protein, which is a fairly high quantity.
These animals are obviously immature. They have lower muscle mass, so they have lower ability to metabolise the muscles. They're also still growing those muscles.
So we do need to provide a high level of metabolizable protein. See a similar effect with cows, but, but very little impact once you get over 800 grammes in cows. If you're gonna scribble one thing down, scribble down that link for, for Journal of Dairy Science, and I will make sure anybody who wants it can get it as well.
It's a really good review of, of the requirements for metabolizable protein and dairy cows in the transition period. The other thing we need to do with nutritional competency is promote intake through tub grain straw inclusion. For me, this has been a bit of a revolutionary change.
We've always talked about high straw to, to reduce the energy requirements, increase the dry matter, but getting cows to eat enough has been a challenge. Tub grinding straw, they will eat 5 6 kg dry matter without too much of a problem at all. And control calcium metabolism.
And, to me, a fairly simple thing. I, I like simple things. If you look at grass, gross silage, it has high energy, it ns your calcium metabolism, and it reduces your ability for them to eat high quantities of straw.
So for me, some nothing green should really go into transition care diets. I know you can make them work, but it's, it's not ideal. So we're gonna look at calcium metabolism quickly.
So, in the UK we generally talk milli equivalents of decab per kilo of dry matter. This is looking at milli equivalents per 100 grammes, so you just shift the decimal place. And when you look at, high decab, low, medium decab or low decab, so low decab at -75 milli equivalent or 74, sorry.
What you see is, in particular in 3 plus lactation animals, but to a lesser extent or there's a tendency in 2nd 2nd lactation animals is a shift towards maintaining normal, blood calcium levels as you reduce the decap. So effectively, you will not achieve if you're, if you're trying, trying to use decab approach, you will not achieve maintenance of blood calcium levels post calving in a third plus lactation animal unless you are a low decab diet. This then has knock-on effects on dry matter intake postpartum, milk production and comparing the control with the low, you're, you're looking at 3.5 litres per animal, at the first test, which obviously has large knock-on effects for lactation.
So Slightly mental looking slide, I'm just gonna concentrate on the left hand side. So on the X axis you've got the DA, the diet in milli equivalents per kilo, so again the figures we're more used to. Red triangles relate to, first lactation, so first carving animals, black squares relate to second or more carving animals.
And what you see is as you reduce the decab towards negative and beyond negative, you see an increase in milk yield, you see an increase in fat yield, and you see an increase in dry matter intake postpartum, and all of those are gonna have knock-on effects on disease. So, Very quick, cover there on, dry matter intake and nutritional competency. To me those are the two key inputs that we should be looking at.
If you want to look at early output monitors of success. Actually And there are times to do this. We can do that.
And the times when we should be doing that is if your transition success rate is not good enough. If you're making dietary changes, I would suggest up regulating the amount of, of outcome measures we're looking at. And if you're making management changes, if you change your transition shared, change your timing, etc.
Just increase the amount of surveillance that we're putting in place to notice, these, these issues. Three things I would look at is pre-carving urine pHs, post-carving calcium. So within 24 to 36 hours of carving and post-carving BHBs, I tend to go 7 to 14 days, but there are, there are theories about why you might want, might want to go earlier or later in certain circumstances.
And the reason I picked these three is they're all cheap, easy to do, and therefore you can apply across a large number of animals. And by doing that, you can get a much better idea of what's happening. So just going to quickly look at urine pHs because I was, I've been talking about calcium metabolism.
And again, what you see in the chart on the left, particularly looking at the black dots, so that your second calves and more, is that urine pH is really closely associated with the decab that you're feeding of the diet that you're feeding. And then if we look at the right hand side, what you see is that urine pH is really closely associated also with the risk of milk fever. So by driving that urine pH down towards the 6 to 6.5 mark, we're achieving much better metabolism of calcium.
And if we have concerns that that's going to be happening, urinePH is a really good time sensitive way of assessing the situation. So there are lots of other things that you can do, and I'd recommend having a look at the Healthy Start checklist, which is available from Melanco. Use them if you've got problems, use them for a baseline assessment of where you, where you currently are and where you think there may be, may be issues.
I think it's worth having and it's worth looking at, as a, as a kind of background resource. It gives a full link of all the things that you could look at with regards to transition co success that have an evidence base. And so, yeah, in conclusion, fairly whistle stop tour, I think what we need to be doing as vets is start looking at the transition period holistically rather than concentrating on individual diseases.
And we need to be monitoring that transition success rate. Key things that we should be keeping a close eye on is pre-carving dry matter intakes, stocking density, nutritional competency. If we're concerned that there might be problems coming, then your urine pHs, your blood calciums, and your blood BHBs give you fairly quick, easy ways of monitoring that.
There is a whole range of more stuff that you can do. And most of you probably know various different things and bits of it that you could do. And there are times when it is appropriate to do those things.
But for me, the most important thing is the transition period is a key opportunity for us as vets to get involved, and if we don't, someone else will. So I just want to say quickly, big thanks to BCVA for putting on these webinars. As I say, I think it's fantastic that, that we're doing this as BCVA, and a massive thanks to Sara for organising them and having a programme that I believe now runs past Christmas.
Thanks to Lanko, Kate, and Mike for providing some of the information, and Matt Boringer for providing some of the information as well. And any questions? Brilliant, thank you very much, Phil.
That was a really a great presentation, loads of practical advice there and really nicely presented as well. So thank you. We have already got questions coming in, but please keep these coming in, and we'll go to those in just a minute.
But could I just ask all of you that are listening, to tonight's webinar just to spare 30 seconds, when we sign off tonight. To fill in the feedback survey that should pop up in a new tab in your browser. It is really important that we get your feedback.
You can let us know, topics that you want us to cover in the future as well. If you can't see the survey, because some computers don't, don't allow it to pop up, then you can also email any feedback that you've got about the webinars, using the email, office at the webinar vet. Or office at cattle vets.co.uk if you want to contact BCVA.
If you're listening to the recording of the webinar, then just add your comments, into the, into the website underneath, or you can email us as well. So please, your comments and feedback, they are looked at, they are analysed, and they are very welcomed. So we've still got questions coming in, so we'll, we'll crack on with these now, but keep, keep them coming in.
We've got plenty of time for questions, which is great. I'm gonna kick off with this first question, which is one that I would have asked you anyway, Phil. Would you include, you know what's coming, would you include lameness as a failure to transition properly?
Yes, but, . Lag period makes it very difficult to necessarily put place in transition to success or failure. So because what we're wanting is a, is a monitor that we can do quite easily and quite cheaply, if you have a cow that develops a cell ulcer at 100 days, that's almost certainly as a result of something that's happened around transition time.
But by that stage, your, your lag time's far too long for, for it to necessarily take place. If you're getting lameness issues within the 1st 60 days, yes. Any, any disease within the 1st 60 days is likely has an influence from transition period.
Yes, definitely. Yeah. I would, I would absolutely agree there with, with lameness being, important there.
And, one of the, the targets I would set as well is zero lameness going into the, into the transition period as well, because I think, I know I'm completely biassed, Phil, but, I think it has quite a big impact on, on intakes and, and things like that. OK. Yeah, and, and I suppose that kind of leads into a point that I didn't really cover, which is what you do if your intakes are wrong.
And then you start having to look at why, what are the reasons why? Is it feed availability? Is it overstocking?
Is it feed, palatability? Is it lameness, is it social changes? There's, there's a whole load of reasons and yes, definitely lameness is important.
Yeah, but if you don't monitor, you can't, you can't manage, which I think you've got to cross, got across really strongly tonight. So just a quick question here for Mary, Keckstone, yes or no? Yes, with caveats.
So, every cow would benefit from a stone bolus without a shadow of a doubt. The real, the realistic answer is we shouldn't be using it to prop up poor practise. We also shouldn't be using it on a blanket approach because we run the risk of child.
Changing its licence and therefore losing it. So for me, any cow that has, that has any of those excuses that we know is potentially going to be a risk for transition issues should be getting a keck stone. So those were twins, those that are over conditioned, those that have long, dry periods, you should be putting a keck stone into those cows.
Brilliant. Going back to, chop length, what is the typical chop length of tub ground straw? Does it risk losing the scratch factor in the rumen?
So scratch factor is one of those contentious things. There's a, there's a lot of thought out there at the moment that potentially it's less important than people believed, particularly in high yielding Holsteins. So what the typical chop length is an inch or less, the, the, it is pretty much fairly battered and actually.
Physically effective NDF doesn't relate to physical scratch factor. It relates to surface area and integrity of the cells within the, within the forage. So in theory, according to the scratch factor, it shouldn't really work, but the reality is it works far better than any other dry period feed that I've seen.
Brilliant. And is it something that you monitor routinely, top length on, on farm? Is this something you would?
Yeah, so, most of the people that are doing top ground straw are, are paying contractors to come in and do it. And these contractors, in my experience, certainly down in the Southwest, are really honourable, decent people who, pay very good attention to their machinery. So.
As a, as a result, yes, every time there's a new batch, you have a look at it, but I'm yet to find a problem with it. Great, brilliant. So then it's taking a side step, still, still staying with monitoring, is there a good system to monitor or assess the immune system?
So, no is the simple answer. There, there are systems, there are ways of doing it. You can, you can assess various different parameters in the blood, you can particularly local immunity within the other, you can look at.
Look at various different inflammatory cytokines, etc. The, the reality is, the failure of the immune system usually occurs as a result of associations with one of the other two, so failure of energy metabolism or failure of calcium metabolism or an infectious issue, or. Nutritional incompetency.
So, I, it's, it's pretty unusual that you see immune issues as a standalone issue. It's usually as a, as an associated issue. So yeah, the only real way that you can assess the immune system is, is outputs, unfortunately.
OK, great. One question here in relation to, dry matter intakes. What forages would you prefer to see dry cows, being fed to ensure that we've got the highest dry matter intake, or do you think that there's other factors that we also need to look at, as well as what's being fed?
Sorry, say that again, sorry it very well. So the question is regarding forages, that have got a high dry matter intake. So are there specific forages that you would be to see fed to dry cows?
So, and again it's, it's it. Dry matter intake is important, but you need something that doesn't, challenge that calcium metabolism issue. So palatability of, of forages is pretty much as you would expect something lush and high sugar and high starch gets really good intakes.
Something that's fibrous and, and low sugar, low starch gets less intakes. But what top grinding straw, for example, allows you to do is you lose that, that kind of, reduced palatability because it's, it's not as. I'm trying to think of an appropriate word, scratchy.
It's, it, it becomes more palatable as a result. Forages, good forages for transition cows, as I say, I like top ground straw, . I, I'm a reasonable fan of whole crop, because it's effectively straw with grain added to it.
So it kind of ticks that box, but it's cut a little bit earlier and as a result, the, it's, it's less fibrous, so it doesn't challenge the dry matter intakes. Maize gets really good intakes. The issue with maize is it's too high energy, so that can drive your overall dry matter intake down.
So, a, a balance of forages, is key. But I suppose, yeah, the other thing is lucerne, you get really good intakes, and it's generally high protein as well. So it's, it's about finding that balance that works, but a combination oft ground straw with some, some, a low quantity of maize and lucerne sounds pretty good to me.
OK, great. So following on from that, there, we have a question here about, factors that influence dry matter intake. So, obviously we have feed and water availability, but what are the influencing factors do you find when it comes to dry matter intakes, and how can they be managed and improved?
But, so, you've mentioned one already, lameness, so, other, other diseases will affect it. I think the really big one that we need to think about is social changes. So, .
If you consider that you've got a 22 month old heifer at 85 to 90% of body weight, who gets moved in the morning when fresh food is put out into an area with, Tight enough stocking density, she's probably not going to eat very much for, for 12 to 18 hours. And actually that's, it's a big thing that we need to be looking at is how do we improve the social angles when it comes to group changes. So, can you run a separate heifer group?
Separate heifer groups work great pre-carving. Can you look at how you're moving animals and instead of moving individual animals, move small groups less frequently, can you, Can you move them in the afternoon? So moving animals in the afternoon when they've already consumed the bulk of their, of their intake.
You get fewer Crucial just moving them late afternoon early evening. So making those, those kind of management changes can, can play a big role. Are you running a two ration and dry period approach or far off and a closer up.
In which case you, you're asking the caves to make a fairly large ration change pre-carving. So if you're running a 2 ration system, you really ought to be looking at pushing closer to 4 weeks than 3 weeks in the transition yard to give them time to, to adapt and then maintain that dry matter intake for at least 2 weeks pre-carving. So there's lots of management factors.
At the moment, heat stress is a big thing as well. And as much as it, it might not be as obviously critical in a transition shed as it is in a milking cow shed, because you don't see the litres drop off, you massively see the knock-on effects and fertility later down the line. And I know I have the joy of living in sunny Cornwall where heat stress probably occurs slightly more than it might in Northumberland, .
But I think as a country, we're very good at forgetting how hot it gets 3 weeks ago, how, how hot it was 3 weeks ago. Yeah, definitely. I think that when we start feeling hot, then the cows have been feeling hot for a lot longer, haven't they?
So another question here from Maria, regarding, she says, thanks very much for your talk, it was really great. Can she ask what you use to measure the pH? So when you're monitoring pHs, how are you measuring that?
Is there anything in particular that you would recommend? Yeah, so, urine pHs, so using the tickling technique. So give them a little, a little stroke underneath the vulva.
Generally, most cows within 30 to 40 seconds will produce a good solid stream of urine. Don't try and catch it if it's just a few drops because the readings are usually, Way out of the range of the rest of them. And then buy yourself a cheap pH metre off Amazon.
They're designed for, fish tanks, fishing ponds, things like that, and some buffer solution, but I wouldn't pay any more than 20 pounds for one. Get something cheap that it doesn't matter if you drop it and the cow stands on it. That's good advice there.
And the question here, again, going back to to dry matter intakes, what practical measures do you have for measuring it? And is it simply just a question of looking what was put out, taking away the residuals, and then, averaging it out across the, across the group? Or do you have any other tips on how to measure it?
Yeah, so I think it is. There, there are more complicated ways of potentially doing it, but I mean, similarly room and fill is a, is a pretty good indicator of, of dry matter intake. It's fairly crude, .
I don't think there is anything more complicated that's practically doable, and that's the key thing is it's got to be something that farmers are happy to do. And most farmers, getting them to actually put enough food down so there is a residual, it can be hard work, let alone getting them to weigh the residuals, but. If it's, it's a long term monitoring tool.
In some ways, so I've got a client who's always claiming that his dry os are eating 1617 kg of dry matter, and I, and I, frankly don't believe him, but as long as the figures stay the same, I'm quite happy because that means they're eating as much as they can. And it's, and it's a monitoring tool rather than an absolute figure. So yeah, quick and easy is better for me.
OK, then it's more likely to, to be monitored, I suppose the quicker and the easier it is. OK, we've got some, we've got some time just to try and finish off, some more of these questions that are coming in. You've mentioned a lot regarding, monitoring intakes and, and things like that, but how would you adapt your advice to systems that are transitioning at grass?
So, as I said, I have concerns about green food going into, to dry cows, primarily because the calcium balance is a, is a real struggle to achieve, . It is my Personal opinion. That, that you can probably monitor dry matter intakes of grass as easily as you can indoors.
They have these wonderful things called plate metres and, and calculations where you can look at the dry matter of, of the field they're in and look at the dry matter residuals. But also be that we can probably do better than trying to transition dry cos at grass. And I'm aware that in some smaller, smaller units that may be the best thing that they have, but Actually get a bear powder and feed them some, some hay would be better than just feeding them gross and at least then also you've got a better idea of dry matter intakes, .
It's a, it is a real struggle that we're definitely seeing a movement down here in the Southwest for those that are carving out away from grass and more towards standing hay for the calcium metabolism reason. And what, again, what standing hay, it's, gives you exactly the same opportunities to go out with a plate metre on the break before they have it. And then when you move them on afterwards and you can work out what the dry matter intakes they're taking, knowing the number of cows that are there.
So it's achievable. It's just a slightly different methodology for doing it. OK, great.
So we'll just try and we've got 4 more questions. So I think we'll, we'll plough on and try to get, through all of these, even though we, we are just going to run over a little bit. But we've got still got lots of people on the line, so we'll keep going.
Just a quick question here then about stocking density and feed space figures that you quoted. Someone said here that they are, higher than they've seen quoted in other areas. So could you just clarify if these are specific for dry cows?
Yes, they are. So, generally when we talk about feed availability for milking cows, we talk about 60 centimetres, but 90 centimetres for dry cows, and you do see improvements up until that, that point. Equally, there are a number of different ways of working out, .
Loose house yard space for milking cows. I, I suppose probably the one I've heard most frequently is 1.25 metre square per 1000 litres of, of milk, in which case a 12,000 litre hoodd would be 15 metres squared, there or thereabouts, which is obviously a, a high yielding herd.
But yeah, dry cows, they do require more space, more feed availability. They spend more time lying down, which is why they require more space. So yes, they are dry cos specific targets.
OK, great. Question here regarding nutritionists and working alongside the nutritionist, . And how do you, so the, the question here is, in human medicine, there are lots of additional professionals such as nutritionists.
Do you think that it's, it's bad to take all of nutrition away from vets and make it a separate entity? Or how do you think that nutritionists and vets can, can work together, or how do you feel the role of, of you as a vet is, is, involved in nutrition, if that makes sense? I hope I've, I've this person's question correctly.
Yeah, it, it does make sense. And, I'm reading the question as well, so, I'll, I, I'll kind of answer it from both angles. So for me, we have a skill set as a vet, and, that skill set is around animal health and welfare is, is partially around production as well.
Nutritionists have a skill set and it's, it's an overlapping but slightly, similar skill set. Consultants have a skill set and it's an overlapping. But in some ways different skill set.
Actually, what I think we need to be doing as a veterinary profession is working together with these other industries much closer. So it's not about us formulating rations for the farmers. Equally, it's not about rations being formulated and us never seeing them and taking it on faith that they're, that they're good enough.
It's about having a team approach where you've got, you've got a nutritional advisor, a consultant, a, a bank manager, a vet. And a farmer all being able to sit round the table and to challenge what each other's saying, in a, in a constructive way for the best thing for the animals on the farm. So no, it's, yes, other people potentially doing the things that we could do is, is a threat to our future, but the answer isn't to shut them out, it's to work with them.
Yeah. And I, I totally agree there. I think the teamwork is, is where we actually see the.
The improvements on farm and using everybody's skills, to the best of their ability. So we have two final questions. So, is it a question that's coming in here?
Is it possible, do you think, to rectify the majority of dairy cow diseases through improved nutrition and getting that right? No. So it's getting nutrition right is massively important and, on a lot of places we don't get it right all the time, .
And in some places we never get it right any of the time. But actually it's, it's the interrelationship between nutrition and management. So you can have the best ration possible, but if you don't have enough feed space so the cows can't eat it, it's not gonna make a difference.
You can have the best shed, the best management possible, but if you don't have good silages, the cows aren't gonna give you enough milk. It's, we need to look slightly more holistically than than trying to just concentrate on. Nutrition, for example.
Great. OK. And the final question, this one comes up, an awful lot whenever we're talking about engaging farmers.
How do we, as vets try and engage, particularly reluctant farmers in schemes such as these transition monitoring, and management plans? What's your top tips? So my first top tip is don't start with the reluctant farmers.
It would be start with the ones that are less reluctant and pick your easy wins. And I suppose there's, it's the difference between a good vet and a great vet is the ability to effect change on farm, and I'm not saying I'm either a good vet or a great vet, I'm just. It's, how can we get people to buy into what we want to do?
So I suppose that's the first thing is pick your easy wins, not your hard ones. The second one I think is, is pretty important as well, which is to try and find out what motivates the farmer. So it's usually one of my first questions if I do a health plan and say, what's, what's your mission statement, and you can get blank stares coming back at you.
And you say, right, why are you doing this? Why are you a farmer? What motivates you?
To do better, and for those where it's a financial motivation, they are the absolute simplest godsends because if you can't prove to a farmer that improving transition health pays for him financially. You need a better calculator. .
Those that are motivated by pride, actually, it's about showing them that, that there are cows that they could do better for and you potentially taking some good cows and struggling with them. Some people just want an easy life, and it's about showing them how improving this can make things easier down the line. Some people want to reduce their, their drug spend.
Again, they're relatively easy ones to, to get once they buy into the concept that the reason they're giving mastitis tubes at 30 days is because something went wrong pre-calving. And mastitis is a fairly easy one to convince on that. Lameness is probably less easy.
Fertility. Somewhere in the middle, I would guess. But yeah, so those would be my two top tips.
Start with your easy wins and find out what motivates the farmer and use that as your way of trying to get change to take place. Great. And I think those are two really great tips, to, to finish on, on tonight.
So I just want to say, Phil, thank you so much for taking the time to present to us tonight and for also staying on and answering all of those questions. We have got through everybody's questions tonight, so that's great. I just want to say thank you as well to everybody that's attended tonight's webinar.
We've had more than 100 of you online tonight. We look forward to you joining us again, for the next BCAVA webinar, which will be in 2 weeks' time. When we've got Colin Mason from the SRUC who's going to be talking to us about respiratory disease in cattle, where infectious disease is mixed with, with management factors.
So again, that'd be Tuesday, the 7th of July 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock again. So I just wanted to say a final thanks to Phil, thanks to everybody for, for listening. And until next time, take care and good night.
