This year Dairylink Monitor farmer Bill Brown has had a major challenge with cryptosporidium (crypto) in young calves. Halfway through his calving period, Bill started getting calves around one week old with persistent diarrhoea that did not respond to normal scour therapy.
Bill worked with his local vet Charles Orr from the Jubilee veterinary clinic in Newtownards, Co Down, to establish what the scour was, and how to limit the impact of the condition.
Vet’s view
By way of treatment and prevention, Charles advocates good hygiene in the calving area and getting good-quality colostrum into the calf as early as possible as a good starting point.
He also helped instigate a “calf snatch” system on the Brown farm where calves are removed from the cows immediately after birth to restrict the calves’ access to dirt and debris from both the cow and the calving pen.
The only animal treatment shown to have any effect is Halocur oral drench given daily from 24 hours old for seven days. In fact, Halocur doesn’t kill the organism, it simply suppresses and delays its ability to multiply. This means that the peak of crypto egg shedding might be 50% of what you would expect, but it is timed seven to 10 days later when the calf’s immune system is more able to fight off the organism.
However, if an overwhelming number of bugs go in early in the calf’s life, this reduction and delay may not be adequate to completely halt clinical disease. So the critical thing is to stop, or at least reduce as much as possible, the numbers of bugs going in in the first place.
Charles’ top crypto tips
Ensure 10% of bodyweight colostrum intake (four litres at least).Use power-washer and steam cleaning over 60C with effective products.Don’t move newborn calves into an infected shed: While initial source of contamination may be cows (or the environment contaminated from the previous calving season as the agent persists for months in the correct conditions), the disease is mainly spread calf-to-calf (often via environmental contamination by each calf batch).Snatch calves: The only way to prevent the new dairy calf getting a dose of crypto before or along with mummy’s milk is to snatch calves at birth and transport them to a clean, disinfected and dry environment.Clean calving boxes: Dairy farmers need to look at your dry cows and those in the calving box. How clean are they? Need to change something? Remember 1g of dung by mouth is enough to infect a calf with crypto.New actions for Browns
To ensure newborn calves receive sufficient colostrum Bill maintains a supply of frozen colostrum in two litre bags, which are flat packed and frozen, and which are subsequently relatively quick and easy to defrost when needed. First milking only is fed as first feed. The percentage of antibodies in colostrum decreases rapidly with each milking. The second milking usually only contains 60-70 percent of the antibodies available in the first milk. Bill will administer a minimum of four litres of this colostrum per calf using a stomach tube, in one or two feeds as required, within two hours of birth.
Preventative action
On the Brown farm, prevention of calf illnesses such as calf scour and pneumonia is a priority, which is understandable as a typical case of calf pneumonia is likely to cost an average of £60 (€85) per animal in medicine and labour costs according to research from Scottish Agricultural College.
By way of trying to prevent scour, all cows are vaccinated with Rotavec Corona six weeks before calving to limit the impact of rotavirus, coronavirus and E coli.
Bill views the period between birth and weaning as the time when calves are most efficient at converting feed into weight, which makes the implications of any illness at this stage such as scour or pneumonia significant. Consequently any challenge experienced during this stage can mean calves are effectively playing catch up, which can ultimately delay the time to first service.
Wet weather and poor ground conditions have played havoc with early grazing on most of the Dairylink farms this week. In Co Cavan, Charles Clarke has only been able to on/off graze for the past two weeks due to poor ground conditions and consequently has only been able to graze approximately 20% of his platform.
Any grass on the farm that has been utilised to date is now recovering well, and the early grazing has undoubtedly stimulated re-growth.
In Tyrone, the wet and heavy land type has put a hold on grazing for Robin Clements and Kevin McGrade. Both farmers had their cows out at grass for a short spell in February, but have had to bring them back inside.
Both herds are still performing well on silage and concentrate, but Kevin and Robin have heavy grass cover in their paddocks and are keen to get the cows out to ensure grass quality is not compromised by delayed turnout.
Conditions in Co Down were slightly better towards the end of last week and this enabled Bill Brown to have a select group of his cows out from Thursday onto a grass cover of 900kg DM/ha. The 80 cows that he chose for day turnout have been scanned in-calf and are a minimum of 120 days into their lactation.
This year Dairylink Monitor farmer Bill Brown has had a major challenge with cryptosporidium (crypto) in young calves. Halfway through his calving period, Bill started getting calves around one week old with persistent diarrhoea that did not respond to normal scour therapy.
Bill worked with his local vet Charles Orr from the Jubilee veterinary clinic in Newtownards, Co Down, to establish what the scour was, and how to limit the impact of the condition.
Vet’s view
By way of treatment and prevention, Charles advocates good hygiene in the calving area and getting good-quality colostrum into the calf as early as possible as a good starting point.
He also helped instigate a “calf snatch” system on the Brown farm where calves are removed from the cows immediately after birth to restrict the calves’ access to dirt and debris from both the cow and the calving pen.
The only animal treatment shown to have any effect is Halocur oral drench given daily from 24 hours old for seven days. In fact, Halocur doesn’t kill the organism, it simply suppresses and delays its ability to multiply. This means that the peak of crypto egg shedding might be 50% of what you would expect, but it is timed seven to 10 days later when the calf’s immune system is more able to fight off the organism.
However, if an overwhelming number of bugs go in early in the calf’s life, this reduction and delay may not be adequate to completely halt clinical disease. So the critical thing is to stop, or at least reduce as much as possible, the numbers of bugs going in in the first place.
Charles’ top crypto tips
Ensure 10% of bodyweight colostrum intake (four litres at least).Use power-washer and steam cleaning over 60C with effective products.Don’t move newborn calves into an infected shed: While initial source of contamination may be cows (or the environment contaminated from the previous calving season as the agent persists for months in the correct conditions), the disease is mainly spread calf-to-calf (often via environmental contamination by each calf batch).Snatch calves: The only way to prevent the new dairy calf getting a dose of crypto before or along with mummy’s milk is to snatch calves at birth and transport them to a clean, disinfected and dry environment.Clean calving boxes: Dairy farmers need to look at your dry cows and those in the calving box. How clean are they? Need to change something? Remember 1g of dung by mouth is enough to infect a calf with crypto.New actions for Browns
To ensure newborn calves receive sufficient colostrum Bill maintains a supply of frozen colostrum in two litre bags, which are flat packed and frozen, and which are subsequently relatively quick and easy to defrost when needed. First milking only is fed as first feed. The percentage of antibodies in colostrum decreases rapidly with each milking. The second milking usually only contains 60-70 percent of the antibodies available in the first milk. Bill will administer a minimum of four litres of this colostrum per calf using a stomach tube, in one or two feeds as required, within two hours of birth.
Preventative action
On the Brown farm, prevention of calf illnesses such as calf scour and pneumonia is a priority, which is understandable as a typical case of calf pneumonia is likely to cost an average of £60 (€85) per animal in medicine and labour costs according to research from Scottish Agricultural College.
By way of trying to prevent scour, all cows are vaccinated with Rotavec Corona six weeks before calving to limit the impact of rotavirus, coronavirus and E coli.
Bill views the period between birth and weaning as the time when calves are most efficient at converting feed into weight, which makes the implications of any illness at this stage such as scour or pneumonia significant. Consequently any challenge experienced during this stage can mean calves are effectively playing catch up, which can ultimately delay the time to first service.
Wet weather and poor ground conditions have played havoc with early grazing on most of the Dairylink farms this week. In Co Cavan, Charles Clarke has only been able to on/off graze for the past two weeks due to poor ground conditions and consequently has only been able to graze approximately 20% of his platform.
Any grass on the farm that has been utilised to date is now recovering well, and the early grazing has undoubtedly stimulated re-growth.
In Tyrone, the wet and heavy land type has put a hold on grazing for Robin Clements and Kevin McGrade. Both farmers had their cows out at grass for a short spell in February, but have had to bring them back inside.
Both herds are still performing well on silage and concentrate, but Kevin and Robin have heavy grass cover in their paddocks and are keen to get the cows out to ensure grass quality is not compromised by delayed turnout.
Conditions in Co Down were slightly better towards the end of last week and this enabled Bill Brown to have a select group of his cows out from Thursday onto a grass cover of 900kg DM/ha. The 80 cows that he chose for day turnout have been scanned in-calf and are a minimum of 120 days into their lactation.
SHARING OPTIONS