Pre-Weaning Strategies to Maximize Calf Health
By Heather Smith Thomas
Weaning is less stressful and calves stay healthier if they’ve had some preparation for weaning. This usually includes vaccinations at least 2 to 3 weeks prior to weaning—so they’ve had time to build some immunity to the most common and damaging illnesses they might encounter. Stress suppresses the immune system, so anything you can do to build immunity beforehand and also make weaning less stressful will keep calves healthier. If calves were vaccinated at branding age, the vaccines they receive just ahead of weaning can act as a booster and provide maximum protection.
Familiarizing calves with the conditions they’ll face at weaning can also ease them through this period with less stress. This may include putting cows and calves in the weaning pen or pasture a few days ahead of time so the calves learn where the water sources are, and how to eat from feed bunks—following mamas’ example– before their mamas are taken away.
Dr. Daryl Meyer, a veterinarian in North Platte, Nebraska has many clients who buy lightweight calves and grow them up to 850 to 950 pounds and sell them to feedlots. They want calves that will be healthy, especially if they have to pay a lot of money for them. A lot of my clients buy cattle on video sales, and won’t bid on cattle that have not been preconditioned (already weaned, with all their vaccinations). Some cow-calf producers think they don’t need to do this, with high prices and calves in high demand. They think that on a strong market the preconditioned calves don’t bring a premium anymore. What they don’t realize is that if they sell calves at a sale barn or on a video auction, many buyers won’t even bid on them if they are not preconditioned,” he says.
Producers need to think more about the potential buyers and what they are looking for. “People buying lightweight calves are looking for value, and preconditioned calves have more value. They don’t have as much risk of getting sick. If you are a cow-calf producer you need to realize that buyers want calves with less risk,” says Meyer.
Cow-calf producers also need to work with their local herd health veterinarian to know what to use for vaccines, as well as know what the buyers are looking for in terms of vaccinated calves. “There is more than one right way to do things, and more than one good preconditioning program. Working with a local veterinarian who is familiar with their herd can be helpful, and they also need to know that buyers from a large region are looking for calves, and it’s good to know what they are looking for.”
Buyers and feedlot operators tend to pay more for calves that come from ranches with a proven history of good health. If they have a wreck with a set of calves, or even a few that don’t perform well, they may be reluctant to purchase from that producer again. It pays to make sure every calf you send on the truck has a clean bill of health.
As stated by one Idaho rancher, if you are selling a load of calves that were contracted on a video auction, if there is any calf you had to treat—whether for scours or pneumonia—leave him home on sale day and market him another way. Those calves don’t perform as well in the feedlot, and sometimes have repeat illness.
This is where preventing sickness in the first place—vaccinating the cowherd, vaccinating calves properly, giving boosters, reducing stress at weaning, etc.—is worth more than having to treat calves. Even if they recover, they may not grow as well and are sometimes poor-doing in the future.
Even with something that seems minor, some of those calves never bounce back completely. If there was lung damage from pneumonia, for instance, scarring may diminish lung capacity and that calf may crash later when he outgrows his air supply. Some of these calves do poorly or end up dying just about the time they are ready to go to slaughter.
Dr. Chris Chase, Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, South Dakota State University says producers need to remember that nutrition is important for good vaccine response. If your area has been in a drought and your cows and calves did not have good pastures, the calves won’t respond very well if they are not in good body condition. This can be an issue, especially with minerals and even vitamins if they’ve come off dry pastures.
Trace minerals and certain vitamins are crucial for the immune system. People often take for granted that ruminants always have adequate vitamin A. “We’ve had some issues in young calves because the cows didn’t have enough vitamin A. If the grass is dry it might pay to use injectable vitamins. Vitamin A and vitamin D are essential for immune health and function,” says Chase. Giving an injection of these vitamins ahead of vaccinating would be best but many producers don’t have the opportunity to handle the cattle that many times and it’s also an additional stress. Even if you give the vitamins the day you vaccinate, that’s better than nothing.
Also make sure your mineral program is adequate. “This is something you could talk about with your veterinarian. Trace minerals like copper, zinc and selenium are crucial for the immune system.” For adequate vaccine response these animals also need good energy levels. Calves still on their mothers are usually getting adequate energy when vaccinated ahead of weaning, unless these cattle have been on dry pastures and were losing weight.
Another thing to think about is weather. If you are giving vaccinations ahead of weaning and it’s a hot day, this may reduce effectiveness of some intranasal vaccines. “If you give those vaccines on a hot day, the IBR portion of the vaccine doesn’t grow like it’s supposed to in the nasal cavity. It depends on the nasal cavity being cooler than body temperature, so on a hot day that response will be less. The virus won’t grow if the nasal cavity is above 98 degrees, but on a cool day the virus will grow just fine. When ambient temperature and humidity are high, the nasal cavity will be hotter than usual. In this situation it would be better to use an injectable vaccine,” Chase explains.
“In calves over 3 months of age, most of the injectable vaccines you’d give will not have much maternal interference by that time. I’d go ahead and give an injectable rather than an intranasal vaccine,” he says.
“If the animal is not set up right, however (not healthy nutritionally, and stressed) it doesn’t matter what you vaccinate with; it won’t work as well.” The healthier and the stronger the immune system, the better response. You need to begin by making sure these animals are in the right condition to respond.
“The pre-weaning vaccines calves usually need are a 4-way viral and Mannheimia, plus the clostridial vaccines. Be aware, however, that giving too many gram negatives can cause endotoxin stacking which results in more vaccine reactions in calves and a poorer vaccine response. For example, giving a Mannheimia and Histophilus vaccine at the same time could cause problems unless they are a combination product that is licensed to be given as a multi-antigen vaccine. If you are giving two different vaccines at the same time, you don’t know what their interaction might be,” says Chase. It is important to talk with your herd health veterinarian about the vaccines you are using and make sure that what you choose will be most effective and not have harmful side effects.
Warren Rusche, PhD, Assistant Professor/Extension Specialist-Feedlot Management, Animal Science, SDSU Extension works with many cow-calf producers and says it’s important to think about how you vaccinate and handle vaccine products. “This time of year temperatures are warmer; in hot weather, body temperature is warmer and there may be more stress. Cattle might not respond to vaccines as well. We know that how we handle vaccines is also important in warm weather, in terms of storage, mixing time, etc. but there are also some things that affect how those vaccines perform within the animal.” In some situations the calves won’t mount a good immune response.
“This affects the immune status of the animals you will be selling (they may not have adequate immunity when they get to the sale or feed yard) but it also affects the ones you keep. Maybe you are keeping replacement heifers, or a few calves to go to grass next spring.” Take a close look at your procedures and how to optimize the effectiveness of what you are doing—how you handle and administer the products, such as injecting in the correct place and route, what time of day to start if weather is hot, etc.
“All those little things make a difference; sometimes it’s easy to forget because we haven’t given vaccinations for several months. It may pay to use a checklist, or to know if you gave a pasteurella vaccine the same time you gave modified live vaccine.” You want to make sure everything works optimally for the future health of those calves.
Shannon Williams, University of Idaho (Lemhi County Extension Educator) says one of the most important things is the nutritional status of these calves before and during weaning. “Are they grazing crop aftermath, or being fed older hay? It always pays to test the forages you are using; it will be $35 well spent to know if what they are eating is adequate or if they need supplementation,” she says.
If you had adequate rainfall in your area, or enough irrigation water to keep some of your pastures green and growing, you could save your best pastures for the calves at weaning. Depending on the type of grass, this may be the best thing you can feed them. “Green grass is better than hay, nutritionally and also doesn’t have dust issues,” says Williams. Weaning on pasture is ideal, if a person can do it, but sometimes you don’t have a choice.
If they’ve been on poor feed, they need something better, but you also need to transition them gradually rather than make an abrupt change. It’s often best to start them on good-quality long-stem grass hay—something they are familiar with—rather than put them immediately on concentrates or rich alfalfa or corn silage. Start with good grass hay, and then gradually change their diet.
One good strategy is to bring the cows and calves into an area where you can feed them for a few days. The calves always mimic mom and eat what she eats, and the cows can teach the calves how to eat from a bunk, etc. The calves will go on feed quicker after you separate them from the cows, if they already know how to eat the feed.
TWO-STAGE WEANING WITH NOSE FLAPS – Dr. Joe Stookey invented this innovative weaning device when he was teaching at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, about 20 years ago. The “nose flaps” are now marketed as a product called Quiet Wean.
Calves are very stressed when separated from their mothers, and stress can lead to immune suppression and vulnerability to disease, especially if the stress of weaning is coupled with bad weather and/or a long transport when newly weaned calves are sold. It always pays to try to reduce stress on calves, but this can be a challenge sometimes.
In nature, without human intervention, calves are weaned by their mothers kicking them off before the next calf is born. The big calf follows along and stays with the cow, never losing the comfort and security of her presence. He may still try to nurse but the cow won’t let him, and he resigns himself to weaned status.
Stookey says his invention came about because of a student’s question. “One of our students asked what does the calf miss most—the milk or the mother? So we decided to find out. When we did the study and took away the milk by creating this anti-sucking device, none of the calves were upset. Then when we took away the mother a few days later they didn’t miss her either, and we realized we’d already weaned the calves! We had weaned them in the presence of the mother and that was the big difference. It was an amazing revelation about the whole weaning process,” he said.
These small plastic flaps can be quickly and easily installed in seconds, with the calves restrained in a chute. Then the calves are returned to their mothers. The flap hangs down over the nose and mouth, preventing the calf from getting a teat into his mouth to nurse, but does not hinder eating grass or hay or drinking water.
The calf is frustrated because he cannot nurse, but he’s not stressed. He’s still with his mother and feels secure because he has her companionship and protection during the weaning process. The cow starts to dry up, and the calf adjusts to not having milk. About 5 to 7 days later, cows and calves can be completely separated from one another and the flaps removed from the calves, and they are not stressed.
On our own ranch we decided to try the nose flaps about 18 years ago. We put them in the calves a week before preg-checking our cows. It was humorous to watch them afterward; they’d run to mom and try to nurse, and just stand there—and bunt the udder in frustration—and get kicked. Mom couldn’t figure out why the baby wasn’t nursing, but neither of them were stressed. They kept track of each other and spent time together, but there was no desperation, no frantic pacing/bawling like what happens with other weaning methods.
We took out the nose flaps a week later, when we put the calves through the chute again for vaccinations. The cows were drying up and the calves were weaned. We put the calves in a new pasture and took the cows to our upper place to spend the rest of the fall on mountain pasture, and everybody was happy. It was easier on everyone!
A few years after the nose flaps were made available commercially, one of Stookey’s students mentioned that her dad managed a big ranch with 5000 cows and they had been doing the 2-stage weaning for several years. They didn’t do all the calves that way because they didn’t have the facilities to accomplish it, but they are doing it with one herd of 500 cows. The year before they started weaning with nose flaps, they treated 70 calves (out of the 500) for respiratory disease at weaning time when they were sent to their feedlot. The next year, using the nose flaps, they only treated 5 out of 500. They realized how beneficial this method is for calf health.
“They were selling these calves at finishing to Whole Foods and trying to produce antibiotic-free beef,” said Stookey. “So this was a good tool for them. Every calf that they have to treat has to be taken out of that program and sold somewhere else. In terms of the premium for all-natural calves, plus cost of antibiotics—and how much set-back these calves experience, this weaning method makes them money and they said they will never go back to traditional weaning.”
Mark and Della Ehlke raise registered Herefords and Angus near Townsend, Montana. “We vaccinate the calves 2 weeks prior to weaning, and this helps keep them healthy,” says Mark.
About 18 years ago they tried this new weaning method. He first heard about nose flaps when he was reading in a Canadian publication about ranchers that had tried them. “A couple of producers here in Montana started using these flaps before we did. They told us how much they liked the results,” he says.
“The calves weaned with nose flaps did better, as far as going to feed, and the weight we put on them. I was somewhat skeptical when we first tried this, but I soon became a believer! A few flaps came out; we had to put about a dozen of them back in, out of 200 calves. Over the years we’ve used them however, it’s been less than 5% that come out,” he says.
“We leave the nose flaps in a little longer than the 5 days recommended. We decided that a few extra days wouldn’t hurt, so we timed it with the first set of shots in the calf, to save extra handling. We gave the pre-weaning vaccination and put the nose flaps in at the same time. This saved one trip through the chute. Most of the flaps were in for 10 days to 2 weeks. Only a few flaps came out ahead of that, and we put most of those back in,” says Mark.
When the pairs were separated, the calves were taken to corrals to be put on feed. “As we were unloading the calves at the preconditioning corrals, we took the flaps out of the calves as we let them out of the trailer,” he says. There were no extra trips through the chute to deal with the nose flaps.
“There was a little bawling in the cow herd when we put the flaps in (when the calves couldn’t nurse) but when the actual weaning date came, and we took the calves away, the cows were fine with it. We just brought them, and sorted off the calves, and the cows went right back out to the pastures. In the past we had to hold the cows in corrals until they were past wanting to look for their calves,” he says. This was another plus, not having to keep the cows corralled for several days.
“Now we wean two groups of calves this way, every year—the spring born calves and the fall born calves—close to 300 in all. The fall group is the largest. When we wean them, the cows go out on summer pasture, and the calves go to pasture also. We usually have green pasture by the time that group is weaned, and they can spend the summer on grass, too. The spring born calves go into a preconditioning program after they are weaned in the fall.
These small plastic flaps can be easily installed with the calves restrained in a chute; it’s just one more step while the calves are in the chute for some other purpose. The tags are somewhat flexible and with just a little twist they can be placed into the nostrils. “One thing we noticed immediately is that the calves weaned much easier. They went right to feed, coming off the cow, with no roaming or pacing the pen. You avoid all that trauma and commotion that I used to dread,” says Mark. The calves were already adjusted to not having milk. If the weather is bad (hot and dusty or a downpour or a snowstorm), it’s no big deal because you are not stacking multiple stresses.
“The flaps are re-usable—we just wash them and store them until the next weaning–so you only have that investment the first time. The few that do come out, you may or may not find them (though the yellow tags are easy to see), so you may have to buy a few more from time to time. We periodically add to the pool to make up for that, but they last a long time,” Mark says.
This is probably the least stress on calves, even better than fence-line weaning, because they are still with their mothers. This method could revolutionize weaning for many ranchers, especially if they want low-stress weaning and are not set up with adequate facilities for fence-line weaning. Being able to keep the calves with the cows and have them fully weaned when you take them away, is a big plus. If a person has to sell calves right off the cow (even though a period of preconditioning is best), doing nose-flap weaning for a week before selling the calves can help a lot. Those calves won’t be nearly as stressed.
Weather is always a gamble and a risk at weaning time, but this weaning method doesn’t add stress like it would if the calves are weaned abruptly. “If a person can do anything to alleviate stress on those calves, they are much better off. The calves we wean in the fall go right to feed after we take the cows away; they immediately start eating a weaning ration. We feed that for 28 days and then go to a grower feed. Our commercial calves usually ship about 55 to 60 days after weaning. That’s a little longer than most people like to hold them, but in our experience, whoever is next in line with those cattle has fewer problems.” The calves do very well, with no setback.
“We are firm believers in preconditioning or backgrounding calves, not only for the gain, but also for the health and welfare of the calf. Buyers today may not even take the ones that are not preconditioned, or only take them at a discounted price. The gain we put on these calves more than pays for the extra time and feed. And with this method of weaning, we don’t have any slowdown in their gaining,” says Mark.
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