Look Back & Ahead For Calving Success

Only eight or nine months ago, the spring-calving cows were calving, the temperature was cold and the calving pastures were muddy. Experience would say you don’t want to ask cow-calf operators how “calving” is then, because the response would be less than objective, reflecting bone-chilling cold and not enough sleep. However, if you want to reduce some of last spring’s headaches, perhaps this fall is the best time to make a few notes on what to change for next spring.

The first step is to list the dead calves. Hopefully, your cattle are in a record system that will provide that information. Your calving notebook should have the dead calves checked off and a brief notation on what happened to each. Until all the calves are listed, the shock of lost opportunities hasn’t had its full impact, according to Glen Selk, Oklahoma State University Extension cattle reproduction specialist.

Can you identify a pattern of problems?

Was most of the death loss right at delivery and involved two-year-old heifers? This could indicate that more careful sire selection is needed, with more attention being paid to low birth weight EPD sires for heifers.

Perhaps the heifers were underdeveloped, which could contribute to more calving difficulty than necessary. Do you provide assistance to heifers after they’ve been in stage II of labor for one hour? Longer deliveries result in stress on both calf and cow.

Was the death loss more prevalent after the calves reached 10-14 days of age? This, of course, often means calf diarrhea (or scours) is a major concern. Calf scours are more likely to occur in calves from first-calf heifers. Calves receiving inadequate amounts of colostrum within the first six hours of life are five to six times more likely to die from calf scours.

Calves born to thin heifers are weakened at birth and receive less colostrum, which compounds their likelihood of scours. Often, these same calves underwent difficult deliveries, which add to the odds of sickness and death. All this means we need to reassess the bred-heifer growing program to ensure that heifers are in a body condition score of 6 (moderate flesh) at calving time.

Do you use the same trap or pasture each year for calving? A buildup of bacteria or viruses in that pasture can contribute to calf diarrhea. Such calving pastures may need a rest for the upcoming calving season. Plus, it’s always a good idea to get new calves and their mothers out of the calving pasture as soon as they can be moved comfortably to a new pasture to get them away from other potential calf scour organisms.

Visit with your veterinarian about last spring’s calf health problems. Pre-calving scours vaccines (to the cows) may be recommended by your veterinarian for this winter and spring. This decision must be made soon, so that the vaccine is given soon enough to provide the best possible passive immunity to the newborn calf. This should be considered an important short-term plan to reduce the incidence of calf diarrhea. We must however, enlist the other management suggestions as more long-term solutions to the problem.