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Calf Scours Management

Calf scours is the leading cause of death loss in calves, resulting in an estimated $50- $120 million annual loss to the cattle industry. Other negative impacts of neonatal diarrhea are treatment costs, labor costs of treating sick calves, decreased performance of sick calves, and possible lifetime production losses.

Key Management Practices for Prevention:

• Excellent Cow Nutrition

  60 days prior to calving is a time of rapid fetal growth, and the dam’s nutritional requirements increase sharply. If those requirements are not being met, it can have a detrimental impact on the quantity and quality of colostrum produced, and on the ability of the newborn calf to withstand environmental stresses. Particular attention should be paid to energy, protein, mineral, and vitamin levels. A medium sized cow should consume at least 11 lbs. of TDN and 2 lbs. of crude protein per day. At a minimum, all minerals and vitamins should be supplied at NRC recommended levels, with particular attention to Copper, Selenium, Zinc, and Vitamin A which can directly impact the immune function of both the dam and the calf.

• Good Calving Hygiene

  Good hygiene is the major way that we can limit the exposure of the newborn to infectious bacteria, viruses, and parasites. All of these pathogens are transmitted from one animal to another through manure, so every effort should be made to keep the calf free from manure contact.

  • Calves can be readily infected through an open umbilicus if they are born on contaminated calving grounds. Every effort should be made to reserve the best calving pastures for the calving season, and not allow feeding on those grounds prior to calving.
  • Calves will also take in a large dose of disease causing organisms as they suckle dirty teats. Keeping cows out of muddy corrals and spread out over dry pastures will help maintain clean udders and teats.
  • Putting all calving cows and calves through a calving corral and/or sheds is an excellent way to expose every calf to contaminants that may be present. Do not bring calves and cows into a common concentrated calving area unless there is virtually no other choice (usually due to adverse weather).
• Excellent Colostrum Management

  It is imperative that every calf get an adequate amount of colostrum in a timely manner. Since they cannot manufacture their own antibodies quickly enough to provide protection during the first few months of life, the only chance they have for survival is to get those antibodies from their dam through her colostrum.

  • Dams will develop antibodies to the organisms to which they have been naturally exposed, or to those for which they have been vaccinated. Vaccinating pregnant cows prior to calving will hyper-immunize the cow to many of the common infectious causes of calf scours and thereby improve the quality of her colostrum. This protection can then be passed to the calf as they ingest colostrum. While vaccination cannot prevent exposure, it can help the calf’s immune system to respond successfully to infectious challenge and significantly reduce sickness and death loss.
  • The ability of the calf to absorb the antibodies in colostrum decreases rapidly in the first 24 hrs. of life. Antibodies must be absorbed into the bloodstream of the calf to provide lasting protection. By 12 hrs. the efficiency of antibody absorption in the gut of the calf has dropped below 50%. By 24 hrs. of birth, little or no antibody absorption will occur. It is important then to assist any calf that has not stood to nurse within 4-5 hrs. of birth. It is a good practice to tube feed colostrum to any calf that requires assistance during delivery or has a stressful start. Some high quality colostrum replacers have recently come on the market that can be used if good colostrum is not available, but they are still not as good as most natural dam colostrum.
• Eliminate contact of Newborn Calves to Older Calves

  If a calf is exposed to a low dose of an infectious agent, he may not get visibly sick, but he can begin to shed more concentrated amounts of the pathogen onto the pasture. In this way, older calves soon become the major source of contamination and infection within the herd. The Sandhills Calving System is a good example of a strategy that keeps older calves away from younger calves, and provides clean new pastures for calving cows. In this system, pairs stay in the pasture where they calved, while pregnant cows are moved onto virgin ground every 7-10 days. Many smaller producers may not have the acreage and cross-fences they need to follow this system precisely, but nearly everyone can plan to manage their own facilities as efficiently as possible and mimic the Sandhills system as closely as possible.

The prevention of calf scours can be reduced to just two strategies:

• Minimize exposure of the calf to disease causing organisms by eliminating contact with manure (used feeding grounds, corrals, barns, dirty teats).
• Maximize immune system protection by improving the antibody production by the cow (nutrition, immunization) and ensure adequate and timely colostrum intake by the calf.