The Sioux Nation Podcast
The Sioux Nation Podcast
Manage Calf Stress through Nutrition
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From birth through weaning and beyond, calves face a variety of stressors that can impact health, performance, and long-term productivity. Yet, nutrition can play a major role—not just in responding to stress, but in preventing it. On today's episode, Dr. Carla Kuehn from Form-A-Feed illustrates how we can actively manage and even prevent calf stress through smart nutrition strategies.
I'm your host to find this. Compose to winning and beyond has to face a variety of stressors that can impact health, performance, and long-term productivity. But what's really exciting is how nutrition can play a major role, not just in responding to stress, but preventing it. Joining me today is Dr. Carla Keene, nutritionist with Pharmafeed. Dr. Keene, thanks for being here. Thank you, Jill. So let's start with the basics. You know, when we talk about calf stress, what are the biggest contributors that producers should be thinking about today?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's lots of factors that are contributing to the stress of the calf. So general causes of these can stem from factors that are related to management, nutrition, or environment. So let's go into each of these a little bit deeper. For example, management issues can cause stress events through weaning times, transportations, hand changes, or any type of thing that we do for cattle processing, like ear tagging, castration, dehorning, or vaccinations. Nutritional issues are also items that can cause stress events in a calf. And this can come from things such as like an inadequate amount of colostrum immediately after birth, or possibly not getting enough good quality colostrum. Therefore, the calf can be more vulnerable to disease, and that can make it more prone to stress situations, and that causes diseases later for the calf. And as we encounter all these weather changes that we've been having lately, like cold days and rain, and then warm days, we can get stress-related events. Muddy yards are often a place where pathogens live. And this can lead to more naval affections or calves that could ingest more of these pathogens while nursing. And if calves are housed indoors, the change in the seasons can often cause respiratory issues, especially if the ventilation is inadequate.
SPEAKER_01So you mentioned a little bit about seeing problems later on. So can you go into a little detail about how early life stress does have some future consequences? Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00So well, depending on the severity of the stress and how prolonged that stress event has been, any of these issues that I mentioned before can have effects on the calf throughout the rest of its life. For example, calves that have had respiratory issues may likely have poor lung development. And poor lung development can reduce weight gain and the animal's feed efficiency later on. Therefore, these animals may likely have delayed finishing times or lower feed efficiencies. And in the case of a dairy cow, milk yields are often lower and their lifetime production is often reduced. And therefore, they're likely a candidate for being culled out of the herd. Other stress events may have an effect on the calf in other ways that are going to affect their long-term immunity or their growth or make them more prone to reproductive issues. Therefore, this is something that's going to affect their productivity throughout their life and likely cause them to be called sooner.
SPEAKER_01Can you walk us through how stress makes calves more vulnerable to disease? So I'm going to tie this back to colostrum.
SPEAKER_00In a human, the fetus is continually receiving antibodies from the mother through the placenta. The primary antibody in the blood from the mother is immunoglobulin G. It's the main antibody circulating in the blood, allowing us to control infections. Immunoglobulin G antibodies, or we commonly known them as IgG, they bind to pathogens such as bacteria or viruses, which help keep those pathogens from growing and causing diseases. When the human baby's born, these antibodies are already in the bloodstream. So the baby's born with an immune defense system, because they receive these directly through the placenta, this process is called active transfer. This mechanism is different, however, for a cow and a calf. The fetal calf is not receiving antibodies from the cow through the placenta. Therefore, when the calf is born, it's not protected against the disease. The antibodies need to be acquired through the colostrum, and this process is called passive transfer. So now the timing of the calf receiving that colostrum becomes very important. We like to see that a calf is up drinking and immediately receiving that colostrum within two hours after birth. And that's because the calf's ability to absorb those antibodies from the colostrum into the calf's stomach is the greatest in that first six hours after birth. So once that calf has ingested those IgGs from the clostrum, it can then start developing its own defense mechanism against diseases.
SPEAKER_01How about if we shift now into solutions? So, Dr. Keene, can you tell me where does nutrition have the biggest opportunity to reduce or prevent the stress in calves?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Stress events, they have an increased demand for energy. So therefore, anything we can do to keep the animals on feed is a plus. And that may be good palatable feeds for calves or older animals, or good quality forages and grains that are free from molds. A good mineral and a vitamin supplementation program is also important for any age of animal. Selenium and vitamin E are antioxidants. So including them with creep feeds or starters is always a good thing. Zinc and copper are minerals and they help with immunity. And if you have an organic source of those or a chelated source, that's very helpful as those are more available to the animal. And also making sure the animal has access to fresh, clean drinking water is also always very important. We can also provide microbials to calves, and this is in the form of a live bacteria. So these are probiotics and they can help populate the calf's GI tract. The calf at this age is not a true ruminant yet. And therefore, by providing calves products with live microbials, and these could be in the form of boluses at birth, or maybe some everyday type supplements, we can get the calf off onto the right track. By feeding these good bacteria, they can help fight out the bad bacteria, and therefore it makes it less likely for those bad bacteria to get into the intestinal wall, and that can cause disease. And one of those is a calf would be susceptible to would be scours. So by using these probiotics, it can certainly help the calf fight off scours, which is certainly a major health issue that can affect a calf.
SPEAKER_01So then let's talk about some of those high stress moments. Weaning, like you had said, weather swings, because after all, this is in the Midwest. How should nutrition strategies change during those times?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's a lot of challenges for the calf that will still go back to her prenatal and postnatal care. So prior to the birth of the calf, we want the cow to be on a solid nutrition program where she has had access to quality feeds and minerals or lick tubs. She also needs good water access. We want her to be making adequate amounts of good quality clostrum. Now, when the calf is born, we need to make sure it has gotten the good feeding of that clostrum and that it's gotten it as soon as possible to ensure it has been protected. Now, during a weather event for a cow calf situation, we just need to do our best to provide the wind breaks or dry lots as that calf is reliant on the cow for its nutrition. Now, if we're talking dairy calves during a cold weather event, we can add an extra feeding of milk so that calf gets some extra calories and that helps her get through the day. During hot weather, we just want to make sure they have some extra water to help keep them hydrated.
SPEAKER_01And like you said, hot for them is going to be anything above 70 degrees. Correct. And then also talked about weaning, which we all know can be one of the most stressful periods. So on a nutritional level, what can we do to help ease that transition?
SPEAKER_00Well, at weaning time, we want to keep the animal on feed. So it's important that they have access to dry, high roughage diets. And they also need access to minerals in a lick tub. We want to make sure they have selenium and vitamin E in their diets as that helps with disease prevention. At Pharmafeed, we have several products that contain stealth. And stealth is one of our branded products that helps support the animal's gut. And it binds helpful bacteria that can cause sicknesses such that are caused by E. coli or salmonella. It can also help the growth of the beneficial bacteria. And that's going to also help enhance the digestion of feeds that the animal is consuming. It's also important to help keep animals drinking. Now we can add like our blue light product into the water, and that's going to help the animals get adjusted to drinking water during this weaning time. Weaning is a stressful time, and so we don't want to combine other events like maybe vaccinations or other cattle processing things that we're doing. Or maybe we don't want to do weaning during another adverse weather event. So we just don't want to combine all these other stressful events together as we're doing a weaning.
SPEAKER_01Where do you most often see gaps on farms today?
SPEAKER_00So I think right now our outlook for the future has some uncertainties and the prices are unstable right now. We're all kind of wondering about future prices of proteins, minerals, and fuels. And when things like this happen, our people are tend to cut back on things that affect nutrition or vaccination programs. And it's important that we don't lose sight of things that are going to affect baby calves or even the late gestation or the nursing cow. That can be a real gap on farms where they're trying to just cut back to save a dollar. Young calves are more prone to disease and stresses, and things that are going to cause more sicknesses or illnesses right now can often result in lower productivity later in life.
SPEAKER_01So, Dr. Keene, what's one thing that's m that might be overlooked but makes a big difference?
SPEAKER_00I don't know if I can think of just one thing, Jill, but I some of the things that I think people tend to overlook that maybe you just you gotta keep looking at day after day. You want to keep yards clean and you want to keep them dry, well bedded if they're on a bedded pack. You want to keep them out of the mud. Cattle that have access to feed bunks, you want to make sure those feed bunks are cleaned out, that the cattle are getting adequate feed and fresh feed. You want to make sure they have clean water, you want to make sure those water tanks are clean. Also, as we approach summer here, we want to make sure they have adequate shade ventilation. As winter comes back, unfortunately, we want to make sure they have adequate windbreaks to keep them out of the wind and other adverse conditions. So those are just kind of little management things, but it can make a big difference for the herd.
SPEAKER_01So then as we look to the future, what trends or innovations are you seeing in calf nutrition and stress management?
SPEAKER_00I think we're gonna see more animals with individual sensors, maybe like how you and I might wear our Fitbits or Apple watches. Then we can spot signs of diseases or decreased activity of some of these animals sooner. And we're also gonna maybe see more natural compounds in the diets of these animals. And that's gonna lead to maybe treating animals with fewer medications and less antibiotics. And a lot of these things that we're putting in the feeds can help with diseases, and therefore we're just hopefully gonna our vet bills and our treatment costs are gonna be decreased.
SPEAKER_01So, Dr. Keene, is there anything else that you'd like our listeners to know?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think whether we're talking dairy calves or beef calves, we have to remember that that calf is our future. We don't want to shortchange its management practices, we don't want to shortchange its nutrition, but we've got to remember that everything we do now is gonna affect its production, its life in the future.
SPEAKER_01Well, this has been a really good conversation. It's clear that calf stress isn't just something that we react to, but it is actually something that we can manage and perhaps prevent if we use a smart nutrition strategy. So I'd like to thank you, Dr. Keynes, for being with us today. Thank you, Steph. And I'd like to thank our listeners for tuning in. We'll catch you next time with more guests on topics related to the first time.