Keeping on top of calf health this winter

With the winter routine back in full swing after the holidays, Christmas seems as far away again as ever.

January is a busy month, starting with moving weaned calves out of the calf house and into cubicles.

Coccidiosis in young calves has been a problem on this farm in the past, although we seem to be able to manage it now and rarely see a calf with the disease.

To keep on top of coccidiosis, all calves are fed meal with Decox right from the start. However, when moving weaned calves from the calf house to the rearing shed with cubicles, we have found that this is a stress point where, in the past, the problem has tended to flare up again.

At this stage, we now give all calves a dose of Vecoxin as they are moved.

Another stress factor is the change of diet from straw to silage. To ease the transition, silage and straw are now mixed for the first few days. After that, the diet is stemmy, second-cut silage and 2kg of pellets with Decox for three weeks. Once the calves are settled and past the stress stage, they then move onto heifer rearing nuts.

IBR

This week we will be giving all cows the IBR booster, which is something done every six months.

Prior to the milk price crash, we vaccinated for just about everything, but now IBR and rotavirus are the only diseases covered as part of a vaccination programme.

I’m well aware that this is a high-risk strategy and goes against the advice from my vet, but in 2015/16, all costs were fair game. My reasoning at the time was that we had to save money, and if we had a disease outbreak hopefully milk would be a better price and we would be better placed to deal with it. If prices had stayed at the bottom, we would have been out of business anyhow, and the disease would be someone else’s problem.

Thankfully, we are still in business and so far have had no disease issues, although at the first sign of any trouble I will be back in with the full armoury of vaccines.

Classifier

This weekend we are due to have a visit from the Holstein UK classifier. This is always an interesting day as it is a chance to have a fresh pair of eyes look at the cows, and find out if my breeding decisions have taken me in the right direction.

That said, taking heifers out to the market is as good an indication as any as to whether I am breeding the type of animal that farmers want to buy. At sales in the last few years, there seems to be a definite shift to a stronger, more robust type of cow, which is probably a reflection of herds getting bigger and labour and time becoming more stretched.

With our TB test due next week, hopefully we won’t be out of the market ourselves. It seems that no matter who you speak to these days TB is an issue.

Production

Cows have milked really well this year, and production stands at 34 litres with milk solids steady at 4.03% butterfat and 3.30% protein (2.56kg milk solids/cow).

This week, we will be scanning, so will get an idea of how fertility has been going this year. My impression is that it is going well, but you never really know until you get the first few scanning sessions over.