Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

whelan2

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

If crypto is after getting into your calf rearing facilities you’ll end up feeding them colostrum for 5+ days...then you’ll end up keeping them out of the auto feeder for 12-15 days until they’re out of danger from crypto.
I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Rotavec treated milk to be fed for at least first 2 weeks to get full cover. Otherwise vaccine is a waste of money

Mooooo

Cow I dried off last Saturday threw her calf today, dried off with cepravin so milking her on ain't an option anyway. Grand cow as well, never happens to the 3 spinners or high scc, soft feet cows...

stanflt

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

If crypto is after getting into your calf rearing facilities you’ll end up feeding them colostrum for 5+ days...then you’ll end up keeping them out of the auto feeder for 12-15 days until they’re out of danger from crypto.
I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I had 3 calves with crypto but all the rest are fine- getting a touch of ecoli scour at day 2-3 which means some of the calves don’t go in the ad lib till day 7-8

straight

whelan2 wrote: »

Rotavec treated milk to be fed for at least first 2 weeks to get full cover. Otherwise vaccine is a waste of money

I don't know about that. Don't they say the gut is totally closed to taking in antibodies after 24 hours or something. I'm a bit disillusioned with rotavirus. Vaccinating for 3 years now and still getting rotavirus. Try everything I can but can't shake it. It doesn't kill anything but it's a pain. Maybe your right but would there really be antibodies in the mothers milk at 2 weeks.

whelan2

Just read the data sheet again. Colostrum from the first 6 to 8 milkings should be pooled and fed to calves for the first two weeks of life. This goes totally against johnes prevention. But if you are not using the vaccine properly as in feeding the treated biestings for 2 weeks , you are wasting your money vaccinating for it as you wont get full cover

Mooooo

whelan2 wrote: »

Just read the data sheet again. Colostrum from the first 6 to 8 milkings should be pooled and fed to calves for the first two weeks of life. This goes totally against johnes prevention. But if you are not using the vaccine properly as in feeding the treated biestings for 2 weeks , you are wasting your money vaccinating for it as you wont get full cover

Calves tend to be getting transitition milk here for the first 2 weeks anyway. Have seen big improvements since started vaccination with rotavec but have also had other changes so dunno its all down to that but it helps anyway

whelan2

There's a lot of farmers dont feed the treated biestings for the two weeks though.

greysides

straight wrote: »

I don't know about that. Don't they say the gut is totally closed to taking in antibodies after 24 hours or something.

The antibodies act locally in the gut.


One suggestion I've heard is to put a mug of biestings into each milk feed.

straight

I used to feed them whole milk and got rota. Now they go on the feeder after 3 ish days and I still get rotavirus. I've been concentrating on tubing 4 litres into them as soon as I can and then I generally leave them with their mother in a different shed while she's cleaning. And transition milk for 6 ish feeds. Hoping I might escape this year but a couple have slight scour these days. Am hoping that maybe a bit of rain blew in on them the other day and could have caused it. It's more pasty than runny at the moment. I've 2 calves after getting bloat too. Never got that before. My father never vaccinated for scour or he never tubed a calf in his life and he does fine.

straight

I used calf clear boluses one year too. Another waste of time and money.

Mooooo

I avoid tubing if I can at all, time consuming but unless they just wont drink I'll keep at it. Spread lime or stalosan f on the calving pen as well and calf pens as well every so often.
Doing a calf programme with vets, they blooded heifers under 7 days old and weighed with tape all heifers there that day and will re weigh in 50 days time I think to see growth rates. Must note any treatments etc for them. All bloods came back above the 5.5 anyway so showed colostrum was good. Kept a bucket in the fridge to have it to hand if needed and have some frozen as well. Just to try to see what I can do to keep em on track. About 8 or 9 different practices doing it so should be some info come out of it

kevthegaff

Changed this year to tubing every calf compared to bucket and teat. Everything has been going g very well, large first feed and straight onto double teat feeder after 12-24 hrs, bo scour so far. Problem this week as aubracs wont bloody drink!

mahoney_j

Every calf here at birth gets 1 cc of multimin and 3.5/4 litres via stomach tube ,left with cow for an hour or so and then to calf pens ,2 further feeds of cows milk then onto transformula for 5/7 days ,seems to be working well ,cows not vaccinated for rota as didn’t see point when calves get so little milk

Castlekeeper

kevthegaff wrote: »

Got the cows earlier in the week for 1 day, cow now with a twisted I think. Does it cause it change in the diet? How do lads avoid it

Yes,it has happened here a few times over the years. Now, we don't have cows too hungry, try and break in changes in diet, we don't leave out fresh calved cows.
It has never happened an NRX only HoFr or Jex

straight

mahoney_j wrote: »

Every calf here at birth gets 1 cc of multimin and 3.5/4 litres via stomach tube ,left with cow for an hour or so and then to calf pens ,2 further feeds of cows milk then onto transformula for 5/7 days ,seems to be working well ,cows not vaccinated for rota as didn’t see point when calves get so little milk

On the shine compumate here this year. I've the plan that if calves get scour i could run to to co op for 5 or 6 bags of transformula. Expensive stuff I think.

GrasstoMilk

straight wrote: »

On the shine compumate here this year. I've the plan that if calves get scour i could run to to co op for 5 or 6 bags of transformula. Expensive stuff I think.

I've gone away from shine powder, found it too heavy on our calves
They'd be going away fine on whole milk, switch them onto shine on either the teat feeder or auto feeder and always got a good few that bloated up or got a bad scour
On a different brand this year and happy so far

Sacrolyte

mahoney_j wrote: »

Every calf here at birth gets 1 cc of multimin and 3.5/4 litres via stomach tube ,left with cow for an hour or so and then to calf pens ,2 further feeds of cows milk then onto transformula for 5/7 days ,seems to be working well ,cows not vaccinated for rota as didn’t see point when calves get so little milk

How do you find the multi min?

Timmaay

I moved fully away from the stomach tube 2 years ago, largely because of the year I got serious problems with scour, I thought I was putting too much pressure on the calf trying to force that volume of milk in them. Calves here might not get their full whack of coliseum always, but they are still good healthy strong calves, and very little scour, so I'd be slow to change 2bh. A good drycow diet without too much restriction (unless she is clearly mud fat), plenty of minerals in the 3 weeks leading up to calving, alongside improved drycow shed hygiene (clearing out strawbedding several times a week), that's all helped also.

Gawddawggonnit

whelan2 wrote: »

Rotavec treated milk to be fed for at least first 2 weeks to get full cover. Otherwise vaccine is a waste of money

Yep. They all get their own mother’s milk for the first five days then get pooled milk from fresh calvers until day 12 or 14. Then onto autofeeder. Once they get as far as that they’re fine.

Rotovec is the only vaccine we use and I hope that the Covid vaccines have more efficiencies...we only vaccinate the cows that are calving between November and March because crypto is never seen with us in good weather. As vaccines go Rotovec is shyte but it still is a good aid.

Gawddawggonnit

whelan2 wrote: »

Just read the data sheet again. Colostrum from the first 6 to 8 milkings should be pooled and fed to calves for the first two weeks of life. This goes totally against johnes prevention. But if you are not using the vaccine properly as in feeding the treated biestings for 2 weeks , you are wasting your money vaccinating for it as you wont get full cover

That’s the rub isn’t it. We don’t have Johnes but we are very vigilant about it all the same because we’re buying cows from all over. Any breeding stock only get their mothers milk for 5 days and then onto the powder and they’re usually the most problematic ones.
I dread walking into the calf house when it’s mild and damp...the kind of damp that wets the inside of sheds or even the car/jeep.

whelan2

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Yep. They all get their own mother’s milk for the first five days then get pooled milk from fresh calvers until day 12 or 14. Then onto autofeeder. Once they get as far as that they’re fine.

Rotovec is the only vaccine we use and I hope that the Covid vaccines have more efficiencies...we only vaccinate the cows that are calving between November and March because crypto is never seen with us in good weather. As vaccines go Rotovec is shyte but it still is a good aid.

Every year I tell people about the instructions for rotavec, it's expensive enough without not using it properly. Still there's lads who know better than the manufacturers of the vaccine.

straight

Had to do a grass walk yesterday. Between the rain and the puddles I got drowned. Covers are looking light and washed out after the rain. The sun today might bring them on.

stanflt

straight wrote: »

On the shine compumate here this year. I've the plan that if calves get scour i could run to to co op for 5 or 6 bags of transformula. Expensive stuff I think.

Your milk powder is causing the bloat- I’d recommend changing to a whey based product- used to lose 3-4 calves a year when on that particular company’s powder- changed to Glanbia easy dual and haven’t lost a to bloat and only lost one calf in total

straight

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Yep. They all get their own mother’s milk for the first five days then get pooled milk from fresh calvers until day 12 or 14. Then onto autofeeder. Once they get as far as that they’re fine.

Rotovec is the only vaccine we use and I hope that the Covid vaccines have more efficiencies...we only vaccinate the cows that are calving between November and March because crypto is never seen with us in good weather. As vaccines go Rotovec is shyte but it still is a good aid.

I used bovigen vaccine this year. It says colostrum a few hours after calving creates passive immunity. We'll see how it goes. Rotavec wasn't working out for me.

straight

stanflt wrote: »

Your milk powder is causing the bloat- I’d recommend changing to a whey based product- used to lose 3-4 calves a year when on that particular company’s powder- changed to Glanbia easy dual and haven’t lost a to bloat and only lost one calf in total

I changed from whey last year. Just gave the 2 calves about 40ml of liquid paraffin and they were grand. I'll see how it goes, the whey based is cheaper too.

whelan2

straight wrote: »

I used bovigen vaccine this year. It says colostrum a few hours after calving creates passive immunity. We'll see how it goes. Rotavec wasn't working out for me.

Did you feed as per recommendations ?

straight

whelan2 wrote: »

Did you feed as per recommendations ?

Over and above

1373

whelan2 wrote: »

Rotavec treated milk to be fed for at least first 2 weeks to get full cover. Otherwise vaccine is a waste of money

Your a bit over complicating the effectiveness of the rotavac by saying its a waste of money if not fed for 2 weeks. First feed of colostrum with rotavec is very effective and goes a long way to giving good protection. And before you say that the label says, feed for 2 weeks for full cover, the label also says a single shot gives 3 months of cover which is true in laboratory conditions as explained to me by a vet . But on a farm with 100 cows in a shed and 100 calves sharing air space, things are far from laboratory conditions and on our farm , we expect 1 month cover from a shot . This has improved things on our farm

whelan2

1373 wrote: »

Your a bit over complicating the effectiveness of the rotavac by saying its a waste of money if not fed for 2 weeks. First feed of colostrum with rotavec is very effective and goes a long way to giving good protection. And before you say that the label says, feed for 2 weeks for full cover, the label also says a single shot gives 3 months of cover which is true in laboratory conditions as explained to me by a vet . But on a farm with 100 cows in a shed and 100 calves sharing air space, things are far from laboratory conditions and on our farm , we expect 1 month cover from a shot . This has improved things on our farm

Look I'm not starting a row just pointing out that lads just throw the packaging away and dont read it and then complain of rotavirus or whatever. At 9 euro a shot you'd be trying to use it so it works

Morris Moss

Any advice or tips for crypto, calves are getting halocur, electrolytes 3-4 times a days and 5ml of aquaprim for the worst ones, I've asked a few places about parafor and was told it can't be got, any help would be great