Swine Innovation Porc (SIP) on March 18 said it will provide up to $150,000 for a three-year research project led by Dongyan Xu Niu, a microbiologist and associate professor in the University of Calgary’s faculty of veterinary medicine.

Niu’s project will look at a new and different way to fight Streptococcus suis, a bacteria well known to cause respiratory infections, meningitis and sudden deaths in piglets after weaning.

WHY IT MATTERS: Canada’s hog farmers are mindful of over-reliance on antibiotics and could benefit from another way to keep S. suis in check.

The Calgary researchers plan to engineer beneficial lactobacillus bacteria to deliver enzymes that can specifically target and break down the S. suis pathogen, SIP said.

The team plans to identify and optimize these enzymes, integrate them into lactobacillus strains and then evaluate their ability to protect piglets from infection.

S. suis bacteria are endemic to Canada, colonizing most hog barns and spreading through contact with healthy carrier pigs after weaning, when antibodies from mother sows are unavailable to piglets. The bacteria are also known to be zoonotic, meaning they can cause severe infections in people who’ve had close contact with infected pigs.

“Strategic research investments like this help ensure Canadian producers have access to innovative tools and solutions to address priority health challenges in the barn,” SIP chair Mark Ferguson said in a release.

The funding for Niu’s project comes via SIP’s Advancing Swine Research Call for Proposals, which backs one- to three-year projects and runs until 2028. SIP said its support for this project is expected to mobilize up to $419,580 in total funding for it.

The U of Calgary project “reflects the type of collaborative, forward-looking research we aim to support” through the call for proposals, SIP general manager Daniel Ramage said in the same release.

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It often costs the seller and/or the buyer a lot of money. Fortunately, better weaning methods are available compared to the abrupt removal of calves from their mothers. These better weaning alternatives are effective in reducing weaning stress in sold calves as well as putting more money in everybody’s pocketbook.

It’s no secret that the immunity/health status of truck-weaned calves is compromised compared to calves put through good weaning programs weeks ahead of the actual weaning. Reliable field data reports that many stressed-out calves never fully recover from truck weaning and suffer from significant rates of pneumonia and dysentery within weeks of being put in a feedlot. High mortality rates are also recorded.

Truck-weaned calves suffer more shrinkage than pre-conditioned calves once they reach the feedlot. In today’s market, where prices seem to hit new highs each week, a 650-pound truck-weaned calf that loses an extra six per cent — about 39 lb. — at $550 per cwt is worth about $200 less than a properly weaned pen mate.

Much of this stress in truck-weaned calves is due to breaking the instinctive maternal bond between cow and calf. The University of Saskatchewan demonstrated that when cow-calf pairs in a herd were split in half and each group of cows was given the other group’s calves following weaning, both cows and calves kept searching for their own partner. Before separation, many of these calves were spending little time nursing on their dams (at six months of age, calves receive less than 15 per cent of their nutrient requirements from their dam’s milk). But after separation, it was proved that the cow still provides comfort to her calf.

Slowly breaking this maternal bond between mother and calf during weaning can be employed in the following ways, which not only reduces stress but also gets calves familiar with a new diet and a foreign environment:

• Complete separation: Put cow-calf pairs in the same feedlot pen for a few days to a week. Once the calves get used to the feed bunks and waterers, move the cows out.
• Fence-line weaning: Separate cows and calves by a fence, which prevents them from touching one another but allows visual contact to reduce stress on both sides of the fence.
• Two-step weaning: A method developed by the University of Saskatchewan that outfits each nursing calf with a nose “anti-nursing” device for about seven to 10 days before calves and cows are separated.
• Early weaning: This is a method that can employ each one of the above methods in one way or another, where calves are weaned at four to five months of age (and as early as six weeks of age).

A friend of mine who runs about 400 cow-calf pairs takes a different approach when it comes to weaning his calves in late fall. He believes the key to good weaning is to fill up the calves’ bellies a few weeks before they are actually separated from the cows.

At this time, the carrying capacity of his pastures is low, and there might even be a little snow on the ground. So he makes up a brood-cow TMR, which contains a lot of barley silage, some grassy hay, no grain and a well-balanced trace mineral-vitamin pack.

Then, he dumps this load right on pasture in front of the cow-calf pairs. It takes only a couple weeks of doing this and then these filled-up calves are removed from pasture and put into my friend’s home feedlot to be backgrounded until late February. One or two calves may bawl for a day, but most of them have already nicely adjusted once the feedlot pen gates are closed.

My friend has gone through many successful weaning seasons. It is a great testimony of reducing autumn calf stress, not only when they are taken away from their mothers and weaned but it also helps them get onto new feeding programs in a usually strange new environment. Such challenges may never be eliminated, but using this or similar common-sense approaches goes a long way. And today’s saleable weaned calves, bid at more than $500 to $700 per cwt, are just too valuable to be truck-weaned.

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The remaining cow herd is now in its earliest weeks of gestation and requires a modest level of nutrition. It is an opportunity to feed some of the most cost-effective forage diets. But as time goes on, beef cows’ nutrient requirements steadily increase, and new enhanced diets are required.

Unfortunately, some producers do not follow suit, which often leads into a poor calving season. To avoid such catastrophe, a nutritious early-gestation diet should be established for the cow herd that can be built up as winter and their greater nutrient demands descend upon them.

Even before we get started on setting up any gestating cow feeding programs, most producers should walk through their herds, whether on pasture or at home, and think about which cows should be culled. There might be many reasons that beef cows are to be culled; the top qualification on most peoples’ list should be open cows.

I recently spoke to a lifetime producer and friend, who operates a 400-Angus/Simmental cow herd. He allows no exceptions to this rule. He figures that if an open cow (that is, not pregnant) is not sold, not one dime will be generated until the fall of 2025, even if she gets rebred by next spring. And she is already an $800 liability when she is overwintered. Besides, with the strong cull prices at the saleyard, it only makes common sense to put $2,500 per cow in your pocket.

Once these open cows and other stragglers are gone, it’s time for producers take a second walk and assess the general body condition of each gestating cow. That’s because a properly fed cow during autumn and going into winter with an optimum body condition score of five to six — on a scale of one (emaciated) to nine (obese) — has a great chance of maintaining a trouble-free pregnancy and good calving season. This compares to a thinner cow with a BCS of less than four, which is most likely to have difficulty surviving winter and often ending up in a difficult calving situation.

Early- to mid-gestation mature cows make the best overwintering candidates to either maintain their optimum BCS of five to six or build it up. In the fall, their nutrient requirements are comparably low to other times of the year.

Therefore, to support their own vital functions and an early-term fetus, cows require 52-55 per cent TDN (dietary energy), nine to 10 per cent crude protein, 0.4 per cent calcium, 0.25 per cent phosphorus, 0.2 per cent magnesium and salt, essential trace minerals and vitamins.

With the advent of bountiful cereal straw across the Prairies this autumn, I have already built a couple of dozen diets to meet these initial nutrient requirements from late October to the middle of December. Plus, I am prepared to increase their plane of nutrition as we progress into the colder weather of winter. In the table here you’ll see six well-balanced early gestation diets for 1,200- to 1,400-lb. pregnant beef cows.

One assumed consideration in all these just-under-$2 diets is to include an accompanying mineral-vitamin program. In this way, I often recommend to producers that they feed their cows a well-balanced yet less costly standard cow mineral for the first 90 days of early to mid-gestation and then switch their herd over to a breeder mineral formulated with organic trace minerals and higher vitamin levels for the remaining 60 days before calving.

It is common that many people forgo this two-step mineral program and feed the latter fortified breeder mineral for the entire gestation period.

As a beef nutritionist, I am aware that these outlined early-gestation diets (with a good mineral-vitamin feeding program) have a limited overwinter purpose. By mid-December, they should be re-evaluated and necessary changes should be made to enhance the level of their nutrition.

Such changes may include replacing a significant amount of straw with more nutritious grass hay and corn silage, or it may simply mean adding a couple extra pounds of barley. Either way, the essential nutrient requirements in most cowherds are achieved until the calving season.

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The Stewarts, who own and operate Pine Ranch along with Erika’s parents Bill and Terry Strande, say they’ve been learning about and applying the principles of sustainable production practices as much as they can in recent years, as they work to develop a more resilient ranching operation near Morse, about 40 minutes east of Swift Current.

Their ranch management skills and sustainable production practices earned them recognition earlier this year as Saskatchewan’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2024.

Erika grew up on the family ranching operation near Merritt, B.C., and she and Cyle married in 2011. For reasons that included getting away from growing urban pressures on their B.C. ranching operation, the Stewarts and Strandes sold and relocated, cattle and all, to Saskatchewan in 2017.

Their place at Morse includes about 18 quarter sections of deeded land with almost an equal amount of government lease land. They have about 800 acres of tame grass pasture and hayland on their home place, with 90 per cent of all deeded and leased pasture being native prairie grassland.

“It’s been a test of our management as we’ve had to deal with drought for the past seven years,” Cyle says.

Along with downsizing the beef herd to better match cattle numbers with forage production, they’ve implemented measures to help make efficient use of available resources.

They’ve paid particular attention to developing a more efficient beef herd, selecting genetics geared toward more moderate-sized, British-breed cattle that have been raised on a forage-based ration.

On the tame grass pastures on their home place, they use an adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing system, which involves creating smaller paddocks to be used with high-density, short-duration grazing — in other words, using the grass but then allowing it time to regrow and recover.

“We are developing some cross-fencing on our native grass pastures as well,” Erika says. “It’s not as intensive as we use at home. By ‘smaller pastures,’ that still means they are three quarter-sections in size, but it still allows us to move cattle to different areas.”

The ranch is also expanding the summer pasture water system by installing about three miles of waterline and new portable troughs that will bring water to areas of tame grass pastures as well as parts of the native grass pastures.

“It is an ongoing project, but if we can improve the water supply on pasture, that helps with livestock distribution and overall improved grazing efficiency,” Erika says.

With cows bred for 50 days and replacement heifers for 42 days, the Pine Ranch herd begins calving in April before heading out to tame grass pasture later in May.

“Using the AMP system we keep them on tame grass as long as we can,” Cyle says. “It all depends on growing season moisture.”

The herd usually heads out to native grass in July and remains there until October.

The steer calves are pre-sold while on pasture usually in late July or August. “We have a good relationship with a local feedlot and can complete the sale with a phone call,” Cyle says. “The steers are sold in July, for delivery at weaning in October.”

As the Stewarts apply low-stress cattle handling practices, the ranch introduced a pre-weaning program a few years ago. The cow-calf pairs are brought in for vaccination booster shots in mid-September, then returned to pasture for another month.

Around mid-October the herd is brought home again for the steer calves to be weaned and shipped.

“With the pre-weaning program it is a little easier on the calves in that they’re not being processed and weaned on the same day,” Cyle says. “And with reduced stress they adapt to the feedlot easier.”

While the steers are shipped, the heifer calves will remain with the cows, probably through November or into December. The delayed weaning with the heifer calves is something new the ranch is trying, Cyle says.

“We want to leave the calves with the cows longer in the fall so they get more used to grazing, and the extra time may ease the calves into natural weaning, but we don’t want to leave them too long so that they begin to draw down cow condition,” he says. “We are trying to figure out the best timing.”

Once the heifers are weaned, the cows will remain on pastures with stockpiled forage, hopefully to December or January. As winter sets in, the cows move to bale grazing on pasture. The herd is split with mature cow-calf pairs in one group and second- and third-calf cows in another group.

The heifers are backgrounded over winter, with decisions on which heifers will be kept for replacements made in April. Those not making the cut become grass yearlings on pasture, usually sold in July.

Cyle says the past five years have involved a lot of learning about ways to improve production practices.

“We have asked a lot of questions and received a lot of help from other people who have similar goals and practice a similar management style to ours,” he says. “We have been able to connect with a lot of people and form some great relationships. The Beef Cattle Research Council is also a great resource.”

“Looking forward, it is a matter of applying these sustainable production practices,” Erika says. “As we develop an efficient beef herd well suited to this environment, we are also doing a number of things that will hopefully work together to improve grazing efficiency, benefit forage production, and hopefully improve soil health.”

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Driving down cost

There are a couple of answers to that and it depends a bit on how we view our operation. We could look at a unit on a per-acre cost or a per-calf cost. In the cow-calf sector, our forage harvest is usually marketed as weaned calves, so cost per pound of weaned calf is a good choice for most operations. For a stocker operation, an equivalent would be cost per pound of gain. Generally, we market our forage through a cow, so pounds of weaned calf is roughly equivalent to cost per bushel in a grain analogy.

If the price per pound of calf is low, then we need to make sure we drive down our cost per pound of weaned calf below the price level to be profitable.

Assessing unit cost can be a big job, especially on a mixed farm with more than one enterprise. For a ranch that is strictly a cow-calf operation with no haying or feed-making enterprise, it’s as simple as adding all the costs together and dividing by the pounds of weaned calf. For mixed enterprises, there are more nuances. How much tractor depreciation is used on the grain side vs. the cow side? How much labour is spent on stockers vs. cows vs. haying?

That said, the fastest way to make big gains is to focus on big costs. A five per cent improvement in your largest cost will have a much more significant impact than a 10 per cent improvement on a cost that is among your lowest.

Depreciation

I like to use the adage that “stuff” kills cow-calf outfits. It’s not necessarily the purchase of stuff like tractors, haybines and trucks — it’s the maintenance and replacement cost. That replacement cost — the inevitable need to update/upgrade — is depreciation. A good way to consider depreciation is “what is the price difference to replace this item, and how soon do I need to replace it?”

There are a couple of ways to drive down the cost of “stuff.” The first and most obvious is to have less. The other way is to use more of the stuff you have. Note I did not say “more effectively” although that is also important, but the more units or the more enterprises you can spread that stuff over, the lower the cost per unit.

Here is an example. Let’s assume we have a $50,000 tractor that depreciates at $5,000 per year. If we wean 100 calves that average 500 pounds, then the depreciation cost is $0.10/pound. If we could use that same tractor to run 200 cows, that depreciation cost immediately drops to $0.05/pound. On a mixed farm, we may use that tractor 50 per cent of the time for grain operations. In that case, we have also dropped the depreciation cost to $0.05/pound, as we can spread the cost over another enterprise.

Another way to improve depreciation is to make assets last longer. If we get 10 years instead of five out of a truck, we can spread that loss in value over twice as many years of production, reducing the overall cost per pound of weaned calf.

Feed

Feed is a huge cost in a cattle operation, and maybe more importantly, feeding can be a huge cost. Cows have to eat, that is pretty much a given. However, I am continually amazed by the number of cows that are not fed using a feed test and a formulated ration. This does not necessarily mean that you must have a mixer wagon and feed every day. But a feed test does help prevent over-feeding cattle and also identifies any potential nutrition gaps with the lowest-cost options we can come up with. This balanced ration can also increase performance, thus reducing feed use and potentially increasing saleable product.

Yardage

Aside from feed testing and feeding the right amounts of the right feeds, there are also tremendous opportunities to lower unit cost of production by allowing cows to feed themselves. Most of us do not appreciate the costs associated with yardage and feeding of cattle. Depreciation is one of these costs, but we also need to look at labour, fuel, repairs, facilities, corral cleaning, electricity and other costs. There is still a yardage cost no matter how we feed cattle, but it can often be greatly reduced by allowing cattle to feed themselves. This is part of why we see systems such as corn-, swath- or bale-grazing gaining traction for winter feeding of beef cattle.

Yield

If you talk to a grain farmer, it’s not all about yield, but it’s a big part. In a cattle operation, we use weaned calves to sell forage. In other words, we need to be concerned about forage yield. Forage quality also affects performance and is important as well. If we can increase our forage yield, several exciting opportunities can be opened up for us to lower our unit cost of production. We can run more cows producing more calves and thus more weight, lowering our unit cost. Or we may be able to graze our cow herd longer, reducing our feeding and yardage costs, thus reducing our unit cost of production. Or we may be able to graze our calves longer or put more weight on them using the same land base, thus lowering our unit cost of production. Lack of yield in forage systems is probably one of the biggest costs to the industry.

These are obviously not the only cost-reducing opportunities available, but for most of us they are big ones. They also demonstrate how knowing our unit cost allows us to make better risk-management decisions. It also helps us to identify and understand areas in our operation that can be improved.

In the next articles I will touch on a couple of ideas to boost forage yields and to assess costs and opportunities on our income and expense statements.

I like to say that economics is the science of justifying what you were going to do anyway, but the reality is by knowing your costs and managing forward, the economists are actually right!

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The main thing is to make sure the calf had colostrum within the first hours (from its own mother or another cow) to ensure a good start in life. The antibodies from colostrum provide temporary immunity to many of the diseases the calf might encounter. After a bottle or two of colostrum, the calf can be switched to regular milk or milk replacer.

More challenging is the one- or two-month-old calf that’s been out with the herd all its short life and suddenly loses mom. Freak things happen, such as finding a dead cow on her back in a ditch, dying from poisoning or bloat, killed by predators or some other misfortune. This leaves you with an orphan that might be semi-wild (not ready to accept you as mom) but too young to go without milk or high-quality feed.

Some of those calves are good enough robbers to survive with the herd — sneaking up to suck alongside the calf of another cow. They are comfortable with their herd mates and seem to manage, though they might be a little smaller than the other calves when it’s time to wean.

If they are only a couple of months old when they lose mom and you can find a way to get them home from the range or in from the pasture, they can probably do all right without mil if you can put them on good-quality hay and a concentrate like grain or calf pellets. The rumen isn’t developed enough yet in a young calf to handle all forage, but the calf can digest grain or a more concentrated feed like calf pellets.

Milk replacer is expensive, and it can also be a hassle to get a calf that age sucking a bottle, especially if it skittish around people. Instead, you might put the orphan with an older animal in a small pen so the calf has a buddy and give them some good-quality feed. Once the calf learns to eat dry feed by following his buddy’s example, you could then create a creep situation — if you don’t want the older animal eating all the calf feed and not letting the smaller one get its share.

If the orphan is very young and needs to be bottle-fed, hopefully you can find a way to capture that calf without the stress of a chase. You might be able to bring that calf home with a small group of cattle and get your hands on it in the corral. The last thing you want is stressing the calf too much by trying to catch it or it might get pneumonia. If you’ve already lost the cow, you don’t want to risk losing the calf as well.

Depending on when the calf lost its mother, it may have already been vaccinated. But if there is any doubt about immune status you could give that calf another vaccination with one of the seven-way clostridial vaccines for adequate protection. Keep that calf in a clean environment because it will be vulnerable to diseases like coccidiosis or calf scours. Sometimes if you don’t have a really clean place to confine that calf, you are better off leaving it out at pasture with the herd rather than in a pen where there has been a lot of contamination. Just monitor it closely to make sure it stays healthy.

Voice of experience

Our family has been raising cattle for 63 years, and we’ve had several experiences feeding orphaned calves. One of the first was a calf whose three-year-old mother was butchered out on the range by a cattle rustler when the calf was just two months old. My daughter and I rode for days trying to find that calf and didn’t find him because he’d gone through several fences into another range. He came home with the neighbour’s range cows that fall. He’d survived but was stunted and unthrifty and it took all winter to nurse him back to health and get him growing again. He was too young to go without milk and needed better feed than dry bunchgrass.

Over the years we had a few cows with fatal problems (one was dying of intestinal cancer, and another was dying from an impacted abomasum). The pregnancy was far enough along that we were able to take the calf out by C-section before euthanizing the cow. Those calves we had to feed on bottles until we could “graft” them onto another cow that lost a calf or have our milk cow raise them.

One spring we lost two cows within a few weeks. One got on her back in a ditch and we didn’t find her in time to save her. We brought her month-old steer calf in from the field easily; he followed his dead mother as we dragged her body down to the gate with our feed truck. We cornered him in the barnyard and fed him a bottle. He wasn’t very wild, and he was hungry enough to suck the bottle.

Then a couple of weeks later another cow in their herd suddenly died leaving a two-month-old heifer calf. She was wilder and more scared than the steer. We had to bring several cows in with her from the field to capture her. When we finally were able to corner her to try to feed her, she was too scared to suck a bottle. She needed milk, so we finally used a nasogastric tube to get the milk into her stomach. At the next feeding she was still too scared to suck the bottle and had to be tubed again. It was the fourth feeding before she finally realized people meant food and decided to suck the bottle. After that it was easy. Those two orphans lived together in our back yard, and my six-year-old granddaughter enjoyed feeding them bottles.

They had good pasture in the backyard and grew nicely. When they got a little older we taught them to eat grain. The heifer gentled down and became a pet and is stayed in our herd until she was 15 years old.

What to feed an orphan

Calves can eat a significant amount of forage by the time they are 90 days of age. If younger they generally do better if they receive milk. If they are on good pasture they can do very well, but if it’s midsummer in a dry climate the pasture quality can be rapidly declining.

An early-weaned or orphaned calf can be raised to normal weaning weight in a drylot with good feed. If simply left with the herd, he may survive by stealing milk but has more chance for normal growth if he has access to creep feed.

According to one nutritionist, young calves need a ration that is highly palatable and highly nutritious (16 per cent crude protein and 70 per cent total digestible nutrients (TDN). There are many options for providing this, including a commercial calf starter or a corn-oats-barley mix with molasses. Commercial calf starter has fortification with vitamins and minerals and the option for medication to prevent coccidiosis. Because of the stress of sudden weaning off milk, make sure the calf is vaccinated for clostridial diseases and possibly respiratory disease.

At first, you can give the calf long-stem grass hay and top dress it with the grain ration for three to five days until he is eating the ration. Make sure calf has access to clean water at all times. During the heat of summer, also make sure it has shade.

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Nick Faulkner of Ruso Ranch in North Dakota has been wintering calves with their mothers for about 13 years. “We keep them on their mothers about 10 months, pulling them off two months before the cows calve again,” he says. “Every year I’ve been pushing the calving season back a little. Last year we started the middle of May and eventually we will calve in June. We want to calve out on pasture.”

Spring weather in North Dakota can be nasty, and some ranchers are calving later with good success. “Calving later is easier, with less workload,” Faulkner says. “Later calving has worked very well for us, along with wintering calves with their mothers. We don’t give any vaccinations for scours or other calf diseases.” Being on mother’s milk through winter without the stress of weaning keeps calves healthy.

Faulkner says they do monitor the cows’ body condition through winter and adjust rations to keep them in good shape. They feed a lot of cover crops that are put up as hay. “The cows are getting top-quality feed to help them keep body condition,” Faulkner says. Even if some lose a little weight, most of the thinner cows bounce back before they calve.

He also finds that wintering pairs together simplifies the winter feeding program. They no longer raise corn for silage, in favour of producing more hay. “We’re doing a lot of bale grazing, trying to reduce costs,” he says. “It all ties together, with later weaning. Calves are eating with the cows whether bale grazing or pasture grazing, rather than waiting for the truck to bring feed to them.” Animals are motivated to find their own feed and don’t become so lazy.

“One of the biggest things I’ve noticed about the later weaning is how much easier it is,” Faulkner says. “We have fewer problems and less sickness. Calves go through winter much better with the cows than they do if they’d been weaned and separated.”

Increasing herd numbers

The ranch has been gradually increasing cow numbers. “We keep our own heifers rather than buy replacements,” he says. “We keep our calves after weaning, running them as yearlings on grass to sell in the fall.”

Calves weaned in late February really bloom on the grass. “We like to run them on dry grass at first rather than lush green grass,” Faulkner says. The weaned calves start eating the new shoots under the old grass and gradually get onto fresh grass.

“They are not stressed at all by weaning; many of them are already weaned by their mothers by the time we wean the group,” Faulkner says, noting this is a natural age for cows and calves to go their separate ways.

Calves stay with cows for eight to 10 months, depending on the year. By February about 75 per cent of the calves are already self-weaned because the cows are kicking them off. Then it’s not such a big deal when we pull the rest of them off, he says. For the final transition, remaining cow-calf pairs are fenceline-weaned in the barnyard. The calves are in the lot, while cows are on the other side of the fence.

Stockpiling grass for various times of year is one of the strategies he is working on. It’s always a work in progress, fine-tuning the management to fit goals “There are folks here in the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition who have been good mentors for us,” Faulkner says. Much of this weaning and management philosophy is based on holistic management practices and working with instead of against nature.

“We try to look at the whole picture,” he says. “The deer don’t have their fawns in January or February; they give birth in late May and into June.” He says it is important to learn from natural processes.

While wintering pairs together is a new concept for many producers in North America, it is a practice that’s been used in other places such as Australia and Africa for a long time.

While it may not work in all situations, it is one of those “new ideas” that may be worth consideration.

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This means I recommend feeding more milk replacer to compensate for increased energy requirements during cold weather, so growth of the calf doesn’t suffer. A general rule I use: feed a 20 per cent fat milk replacer and increase its amount by two per cent for every degree the temperature falls below 5 C.

An illustration of this recommendation (original source: NRC, 2001) is in the accompanying table further down.

For example, a 50-kg pre-weaned (under three weeks of age) calf needs a total of about 14 megajoule (MJ) of energy to stay alive and support modest growth performance. It will need about 700-800 grams of milk replacer powder daily. That works out to about 5.5-6.0 litres of milk replacer solution, reconstituted at the rate of 125-130 g/litre of solution (same as whole milk). Given a typical cold day of -10 C, this calf would need a total amount of eight to nine litres of milk replacer solution to stay alive and warm.

Feed 3X if necessary

Since this daily volume of liquid might constitute a belly-full for some of the younger dairy calves fed in two meals, a third feeding might be necessary to assure that calves drink enough milk replacer, yet prevent bloat and scours.

Although milk-fed baby calves younger than three weeks do not pick up or digest energy-containing dry calf starter, I think that it is a good idea to set out a small meal at two weeks of age. They will nibble at it at first, but eventually will voluntarily eat more of this dry feed as time goes on. It has been shown at least one to two litres of extra fresh water per animal should be provided separately to milk replacer feedings. This practice encourages young and older ones alike to either accept or consume more of the dry feed.

For this milk replacer and latter calf starter to be of value, young calves need to be fed in comfortable housing. This means that common plastic hutches should be in good condition to house calves and placed facing south exposure for more sunlight and less crosswind. Next, more clean and dry straw bedding should be provided as insulation. There should be at least enough straw so the calves’ feet cannot be seen when they stand up. Afterwards throughout the winter, dairy calf hutches or shelters should be cleaned, with dirty and wet straw removed and replaced with fresh straw.

In the last few years, calf blankets have been used in conjunction with adequate straw bedding. They are essentially a body-fitted coat for dairy calves, usually made of insulated fabric, and which help reduce heat (energy) loss. The blankets should keep the calf warmer and drier, particularly when they lie on damp straw.

Despite my best advice as a dairy nutritionist, there is a point, when no matter how much feed, straw or blankets are used, that the weather becomes too cold for outdoor calves to survive.

A few winters ago, I got a call from a dairy producer who fed about 10 litres of milk replacer per calf to calves that were well-bedded with lots of straw in outdoor hutches, placed near the shelter of a row of trees. Out of 15 calves, four had perished during a recent night of -35 C with a windchill factor of -52 C. After some discussion, he came up with his own corrective action by which he moved them into a garage with some supplemental electric heat.

While that was an extreme situation, most baby calves raised outside in hutches or cold barns can do well during the winter. However, pre-weaned calves must rely upon a good milk replacer-feeding program, which provides enough dietary winter energy. It should not only prevent them from shivering but allow them to remain healthy and continue to grow.

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For the spring calver, great observation skills combined with the right decisions and the ability to go the extra mile will generally be rewarded. I hope everyone preg-checked their herds and removed the open and very late cows well before calving season. This eliminates a lot of the unnecessary labour of checking open cows and removing cycling cows from the calving area. Cycling cows can raise havoc, fighting, pushing and stepping on newborns. Late cows need to be in a separate pen or sold.

First off and without question, new cow-calf pairs should be removed to a separate quiet area as soon as calving has occurred. This makes checking easier and keeps the calving ground less contaminated.

I wish more experienced producers could share or teach the little things they do when checking cattle. For example, questioning if blood from the vagina indicates a problem or if meconium (earliest stool of newborn calf) in the water bag is an indication the calf is stressed and needs to be extracted. Has one been nesting with no progress?

Calving cameras are also useful. Cameras positioned on the calving herd can reveal how many cows will try and steal a newborn. Particularly in the purebred business, it is critical to find out and confirm who belongs to who. Cross-adoption or abandonment by heifers that are not closely watched is another issue.

Confused mothers

Also, cows just going into stage one of labour will often claim a newborn and drive the real mother off. Good producers will let both cows follow the calf into the barn, knowing one is the real mother and the other should calve right away.

With a good maternity chute, you can rectal-exam the cow you think hasn’t calved to feel for a full-term calf in the uterus. If you feel nothing, check the other cow. One has to have a calf in it. If intervention is not done, the calf can get claimed by the wrong mother, her labour stops and she finally delivers a stillborn calf later in the day.

In cold weather, one simply has to get the cow-calf pair into their own pen and the calf dried off and warmed up. It is amazing how quickly most calves will suck once warmed, so the more we pair up cows with their calves directly after birth the calves will get up nurse suckle and pass meconium. This extra care to ensure mothering up will reap huge health benefits down the line. The colder it gets the more critical this warmup time is.

While running through the barn, use good observation skills to notice bad feet, lame cattle, and teats that aren’t sucked or could have mastitis. While the cow is close to the maternity chute, other issues including eye problems can be closely examined and treated if necessary.

I haven’t seen any hard data on this, but I believe if possible there are benefits to keeping a newborn calf and its mother in a separate standalone pen for close to 24 hours. It will reap huge benefits. That calf will have less susceptibility to pneumonia or scours because of a good suck of colostrum. If the calf is any bit slow to rise or doesn’t have a good suckle reflex by about 10 minutes, don’t delay, take action. Give the calf a colostrum replacement product such as Headstart. Check any colostrum replacers for quality. You usually get what you pay for and this is not the place to cut costs. If needing to tube with the colostrum, have one feeder for newborns (a new one), another for sick calves and still another for scouring calves. Have a plan for where sick and scouring calves (hopefully you don’t have any) can be isolated. This is critical to help prevent spread of disease in your herd.

I like to insist on boot dips by the maternity pen to keep producers aware that biosecurity on your farm is the most critical at calving time. Get all supplies ready, stocked and the calving area as clean as possible. Make sure the maternity pen calving jack has had a proper preparatory cleaning.

In Part 2, I will follow the progress of the calf into the bigger pens in the yard. I hope calving season goes well, and weather is on your side.

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He used to house about 15 outside in several lean-tos, which were a sheet of old plywood covering an enclosure of paige wire. He freely admitted that he was so cheap that on a few occasions, he bedded calves with ice-encrusted straw taken from rained-on round bales. Then he fed each calf twice-a-day a bucket of whole milk (no extra water) and calf starter misered out at ¼ – ½ lb. per head, no matter how large the calf. He said that as a result, on any given winter day all the calves were gaunt, frequently had scours and were covered with ringworm.

On one cold winter night at -28 C, five baby calves froze to death. From that day forward, he replaced all the lean-tos with straw-bale house, which group-housed all baby calves. He then implemented a significantly improved baby calf feeding program.

Near a row of trees, he constructed a wooden frame using pine lumber and lined it with straw bales (with a straw roof). The floor still had some snow on it, but clean and dry straw was put down so calves could make nests. The producer then implemented a third pail feeding of whole milk for all the calves with the larger calves getting a litre more. He also provided a textured calf starter on a free-choice basis, fed on a home-made belt feeder. By the time, the snow disappeared, he said: no more calves died, their ringworm/sores/scours faded and their weight gains visibly rebounded.

Proper feed and housing

I must admit that the story of the straw house was impressive, but its also a good testimonial that a good milk-feeding program is still crucial, especially in winter when the amount of whole milk/milk replacer needs to be increased to provide enough dietary energy to help baby calves stay warm and keep growing as winter temperatures fall.

I generally recommend that for pre-weaned dairy calves less than three weeks of age, to increase the amount of whole milk or milk replacer (20 per cent protein/20 per cent fat, reconstituted at 125-130 grams/litre of solution) by two per cent for every degree C that the outside temperature (including windchill) falls below 20 C for dairy calves from birth — three weeks of age and for calves older than three weeks old, it’s 10 C.

Many producers have told me they frequently have difficulty getting these extra amounts of milk/milk replacer into baby calves, even if they provide a third feeding. That’s because some calves simply don’t have the gut capacity for more milk or simply are not hungry. Some producers have also found mixing milk replacer at higher concentrations (re: 150-160 g/litre solution) cause nutritional white scours.

The good news is the cold can stimulate calf starter (energy) intake, even when two-week old calves just nibble at it. This initiation helps. And by the time they are a couple of weeks older, they will likely be eating up to 500-600 grams per day, which doubles by weaning time. Take note — the key to feeding high quality textured calf starter is making sure it is fresh and low in molasses (less than two per cent) in order to avoid it being fed in chunks.

On the non-nutritional side, it also warrants that calves be fed in a comfortable environment. This means the more common plastic hutches (rather than straw houses) should be in good condition to house calves and placed facing a southern exposure for more sunlight and less crosswind. Next, more clean and dry straw bedding should be provided as insulation — sufficient so the calves’ feet cannot be seen when they stand up. Afterwards throughout the winter, dairy calf hutches or shelters should be cleaned, with dirty and wet straw be removed and replaced.

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