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With calving getting under way, many farmers will be focusing more on getting a live calf on the ground.
But management of the cow and calf outfit in the days immediately after calving is also important. With so much wet weather of late, there will be very few opportunities to start slipping outfits out to grass, even on the driest of farms.
Therefore, freshly calved cows will most likely remain housed for a few weeks after calving. Following the outlined steps will help to keep calves healthy until turnout.
Once the calf is born, it is imperative that the animal is up and sucking the cow within 20 to 30 minutes of being born, with regular feeds during the first 24 hours of being born.
Calves should get 2l of colostrum inside the first two hours of life. However, it is not practical, or safe, to try and milk out every suckler cow in the herd. So it can be hard to gauge how much milk the calf receives when sucking the cow.
As a rule of thumb, every 10 minutes of continuous sucking should equate to the calf getting 1l of milk from the cow.
Once the calf is born, treat the navel as early as possible to reduce the risk of disease passing to the calf.
As the newborn calf lies on the ground, its navel will be face down in bedding. If the bedding is wet and heavily soiled, disease will be transmitted right into the navel.
Therefore, make sure calving pens are clean and well bedded with straw to provide a clean, dry lying area for the newborn animal.
Where cows calve in a loose box, it is important to keep these pens as clean as possible for the reasons outlined in step two.
The longer a cow remains in a calving box, the more she will soil the bedding and possibly shed pathogens. This increases the risk of disease for the next calf to be born in the pen.
Once calves are on their feet, and you are confident the calf is sucking its mother, move the outfit to larger group pens. Again, keep group pens as clean as possible and freshly bedded every day.
Ideally, these group pens should have a separate creep area for calves to lie on clean bedding and can access creep feed.
Cows can lose between 40l and 60l of fluid during labour, so there is a high risk of a cow being dehydrated immediately after calving.
Cows should have access to fresh water in a drinking trough while they are in a calving box, so that they can rehydrate.
Properly hydrated cows will let down milk easier, helping the calf to get colostrum and milk from its dam.
Many farmers will fill a bucket with water and leave it in pens after calving, which is fine provided the bucket is repeatedly topped up.
A bucket will provide around 10l of water, which is not enough to rehydrate a cow. Also, more often than not, the cow will spill the bucket.
This means a cow can go without water for most of the day, or night at a crucial time period.
Move freshly calved cows on to a diet of good-quality silage, offered on an ad-lib basis. Concentrates can also be offered at 1kg to 3kg/day depending on silage quality.
Moving cows out of calving boxes to loose housing will make it easier to group-feed animals, as this will be less labour intensive compared to forking silage in to individual pens.
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