As for the cow herself, Spire says
if the animal is working hard to give birth he’ll give her no more than an hour before intervening — 2 hours for a heifer. Interven- tion can reduce some of the stress on the calves, as well as the wear and tear on the cows. “Don’t let them go a long time,”
he says. “That ends up weakening the calf and it weakens the cow. We end up with more disease and in fact, we’ll see about 3 times the death loss in calves that survived dystocias before they’re weaned than in calves that had a normal birth with no problems or diffi - culties.” In addition, calves that have
gone through dystocia tend not to absorb good levels of antibodies via the colostrum; therefore, they lack protection and are more susceptible to disease down the road. Spire says in addition to making
sure the cow was well-vaccinated pre-calving, the herd owner may want to accelerate the vaccination program for the calves. While calves tend to receive their fi rst vaccina- tions at 8 to 12 weeks of age, when there has been a higher level of calving problems within a group, Spire says they’ve sometimes had to start handling calves and give them vaccines the day they’re born, or within the fi rst week. He concludes, “The key part of
this is that there are a lot of poten- tially bad things that can happen during the calving season to the herd, whether it’s higher levels of dystocia or the weather…whether it’s crowded calving areas or poor nutrition in the dam or poor im- munological status in the dam… all those things are contributors to disease in a set of calves before we get to weaning. Management is the key to increased profi tability.”
tscra.org
South Poll Grass Cattle Association 57 Friar Tuck Way Fyffe, AL 35971 256-996-3142
www.southpoll.com southpollgrasscattle@yahoo.com TSCRA_BW_1.3Page.pdf 1 15/05/2013 1:40:11 PM
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February 2014 The Cattleman 51
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