You don’t have to grit your teeth and bear them year after year
Regular as the calving season itself, the calf scouring season comes right on its heels year after year. If you’re gritting your teeth in anticipation of another spring of watching calves melt into the ground, try these ideas to beat this calf killer.
Getting a good dose of colostrum into each calf is the No. 1 tool to ward off scours. The sooner, the better.
When a calf can’t get that from the mother, dose it with a tube feeder within the first couple of hours. You can either collect colostrum from the dam herself, take it from a cow that’s lost her calf, or buy it frozen from a neighboring dairy. Although colostrum from your own herd is best, get some into calves no matter what source you use. Commercial products are only a supplement. They can’t replace colostrum you should have on hand. Don’t overfill the calf--about 3 pints is enough.
Calves can scour for any number of reasons: Overwhelming infectious diseases, poor cow nutrition, too much milk and stress. The most common reason is infection by either E. coli, viruses, or Salmonella.
A bit of good news about infection was confirmed by a recent report from South Dakota. Researchers there checked several farms that had experienced calf scours the spring before.
They could find no pathogenic viruses, E. coli, salmonella or Cryptosporidia in any of the samples of moist compacted manure, bedding or dirt from the areas where calves had been penned during the scours outbreak. Those results demonstrate that your cows themselves, not the environment or feed, are the most likely source of infection. But once calves break with scours, they quickly load up the environment to infect other calves the rest of the season.
To reduce the spread of scours organisms, separate cow/calf pairs from the pregnant cow herd within a week after delivery. If possible, provide a calf resting area that cows can’t get to--a calf shed or corner of the barn. And don’t underestimate the endurance of both cows and calves to withstand the weather--if the conditions aren’t severe and you can still keep an eye on close-up cows, calving on a clean pasture rather than a barn or pen is one of nature’s best scours preventers.
Dystocia, or calving difficulty, continues killing calves after the birth: Calves affected by rough births are weak and adapt poorly to the environment. Taking a longterm approach to heifer management and genetic selection for birthing ease will also help reduce scours.
You increase the chances of saving a susceptible calf if you catch an outbreak early and begin to head it off.
Keep an eye out for the signs of a sick calf--dropped head, lowered ears, shallow and fast breathing, strange posture, standing alone. At the first sign of diarrhea, put the calf in a warm, dry place. Provide a heat lamp.
If the calf refuses to nurse or rise, grows cold in the legs, shows sunken eyes, or displays skin that won’t return to position when you pinch it, get veterinary advice.
Antibiotics can help control bacteria-based scours, but blindly throwing antibiotic combinations at scours is a bad idea: They do no good against viral infections, they reduce the number of beneficial bacteria, and over the long run can lead to resistant germs developing.
Work with your veterinarian to pinpoint the cause of chronic scours outbreaks. A necropsy of freshly dead or dying calves can help you better target your antibiotic use.
Scours usually kills calves through dehydration. Infected calves can easily lose 10 percent of their body weight in one day. So, once you spot a case of scours, your first treatment should be to control that dehydration.
Force feeding an electrolyte solution through a feeding tube can help restore the lost fluids and salts needed for cell metabolism. Your animal-health dealer will have high-energy electrolyte products that aid in saving calves.
Bacterins and vaccines are available to help control important infectious causes of scours. Those that are given to cows before calving increase antibody production in the cow’s colostrum, which then protects calves.
Work with your veterinarian to plan a calf scours vaccination program the works with your vaccination and management program. Remember that even the best vaccines only help protect good management. They can’t replace careful husbandry.
Watch these calves most closely for early signs of scours
Reprinted with permission from Practical Health/Farmland, February 1998