Calf stress is not something that many farmers would consider or be aware of when rearing calves – but they should be.
At a recent CalfCare event, hosted by Teagasc and Animal Health Ireland (AHI), held on the Co. Carlow farm of John Roche, Tirlán’s veterinary advisor Joris Somers offered some advice to farmers.
While Somers’ advice focused on signs of ill health in calves and treatment of these calves, he also spoke around stress in young calves and the impact this can have.
Calf stress
According to Somers, changes in diet, tagging, disbudding and cold weather are all stressors for calves.
Somers outlined that stress suppresses a calf’s immune system and what farmers need to avoid is multiple stressors at the one time.
Commenting he said: “If you are moving calves from one pen to another, avoid tagging them at the same time or giving them a vaccination.
“If you give a calf a vaccine when they are stressed it is likely you won’t obtain the full benefit from it, because the immune system doesn’t know what to do with it due to it being suppressed.”
Somers noted that although doing multiple jobs with calves at the one time can be a huge time saver, particularly in the spring, it is not worth it for the stress burden it puts on the animals.
Time between jobs
Somers advised that farmers leave a number of days between completing jobs with calves such as vaccinating, disbudding or castration to allow the calf to recover and reduce stress levels.
By not allowing calves to recover it may take the calves longer to do so, and there is then the potential that the calf will not drink for a number of hours which will have an impact on its development.
He also noted that during cold weather, calves can become ‘cold stressed’, which means they use more of the milk/milk replacer they have consumed for health.
Somers advised farmers that during cold weather they should increase the amount of milk/milk replacer they are feeding calves to help them combat cold stress.