Ep. 185 – Best Practices for Colostrum Management in Beef Calves

Have You Herd? AABP PodCasts

AABP Executive Director Dr. Fred Gingrich is joined by Dr. Clair Windeyer, Associate Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. This podcast is brought to you by the ad hoc AABP Cattle Youngstock Committee. If you are interested in joining an AABP committee, please go to the committee page on the AABP website to find a committee of interest and on each committee page is a contact button to let us know you would like to join.

We start our podcast by explaining the differences between colostrum recommendation for dairy vs. beef calves. Windeyer reports that research shows that up to 33% of beef calves demonstrate failure of passive transfer (FPT) and it can be challenging to identify calves that need assistance before the window of opportunity closes to ensure calves receive adequate colostrum. Calves that have FPT have an 8x higher odds of treatment for any disease and an 18x higher risk of all-cause mortality. If calves have greater than 24 g/L of IgG, they have a 10x lower risk of dying preweaning and about 0.2 pounds increased average dairy gain. From a financial perspective, each case of FPT costs on average $80.

Windeyer discusses how to identify calves that are at risk so that we do not interrupt maternal bonding. This can include calves born to heifers, twins, assisted pulls, and those with lack of suckle reflex. We also discuss how to properly train producers to tube feed calves colostrum if they will not drink from the bottle as well as what type of colostrum to feed the calf.

Veterinarians have tremendous opportunity to work with cow-calf producers to ensure calves receive adequate colostrum and develop programs to train producers how to assist and monitoring the success of those programs.

LINKS:

Beef Cattle Research Council YouTube video link on how to properly use an esophageal tube feeder.

Beef Calf Vigor Assessment Podcast with Dr Elizabeth Homerosky

Publications mentioned in the podcast by Gamsjäger, Lisa, et al.:

Impact of volume, immunoglobulin G concentration, and feeding method of colostrum product on neonatal nursing behavior and transfer of passive immunity in beef calves https://doi.org/10.1016/j.animal.2021.100345

Total and pathogen-specific serum Immunoglobulin G concentrations in neonatal beef calves, Part 2: Associations with health and growth https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2023.105993

Total and pathogen-specific serum Immunoglobulin G concentrations in neonatal beef calves, Part 1: Risk factor https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2023.106026

Assessment of Brix refractometry to estimate immunoglobulin G concentration in beef cow colostrum https://doi.org/10.1111/jvim.15805

Evaluation of 3 refractometers to determine transfer of passive immunity in neonatal beef calves. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvim.16016