As spring calving pushes on and labour begins to stretch, farmers need to ensure they are still keeping an eye out for sick calves.

Identifying sick calves early is vital so treatment can be administered before their performance is affected, and before whatever has made the calf sick spreads throughout the shed.

Calves should be checked on multiple times a day, with morning and evening feedings consisting of the main checks.

When calves are being fed, they should be bright and active with perky ears.

If calves are slow to get up at feeding or failing to get up at all, they should be closely monitored.

You should also keep a keen eye out for indicators of illness, such as sunken eyes, elevated heart rate, heavy breeding, swollen or inflamed naval, nasal discharge, and/or faecal inconsistency.

Sick calves may isolate themselves from the group, lying in a corner away from the rest of the pen.

Isolation

If a farmer does notice any of these symptoms, the calf should be separated from the group immediately and placed into an isolation pen or calf recuperation pen.

It is crucial for the survival of the calf that that they get treatment as soon as possible.

The isolation pen should also be set up with an infra-red heat lamp to get heat into calf so it is not burning its own energy to heat itself as well as fighting off its infection.

This heat will help the calf to get back to eating and drinking, letting it continue to thrive rather than being completely stunded while it recovers.

Calf health

During peak calving it is easy to let calf health slip, especially as calves are moved into large groups and fed in batches.

When this does happen, individual inspections become less routine and time constraints often lead to farmers ploughing through calf feeding.

A lot of farmers may be focusing on milking as they look for sick cows and monitor issues such as mastitis, leaving relief workers or students to feed the calves.

These workers may not have the same experience as the farmer and may not notice a calf that is unwell.

A lot of automatic calf feeders monitor calf health by tracking milk consumption, drinking speed, and frequency of visits.

However, some models may not have this ability, and even if they do it is always worth physically checking calves regularly in case the system is missing out on any issues.

Colostrum

At this time of the year, farmers will be sick of hearing it, but the importance of colostrum can not be stressed enough.

There is no doubt that calf health and immunity starts with quality colostrum in the calf's early life.

Calves are born with no immunity and only obtain immunity from material antibodies passed through colostrum.

That is why feeding high quality colostrum with values of above 22% on a colostrometer or a brix refractometer should be done following the ‘1-2-3’ colostrum rule.

The importance of this rule is paramount in ensuring calves get adequate antibodies, as they can not obtain the antibodies in the colostrum after 24 hours after birth, and so the effectiveness of colostrum reduces with time after calving.

While maximum absorption of antibodies occurs within two hours of birth, the absorption capacity is reduced to 50% by six hours after birth.

If you have extra colostrum at this time of the year, store it for shoulders of the season, when quality colostrum may not be readily available.