Scour is the biggest killer of young calves on Irish dairy farms, with infections often picked up in their environment.
Scour in young calves is caused by a variety of infectious agents including parasites, viruses and bacteria.
When scour occurs in a calf, the mucosa lining of the intestines gets damaged, which causes a loss of fluid and salts, resulting in the calf becoming dehydrated.
Ahead of the autumn-calving season beginning on farms, it is important to be prepared for cases, and to try and prevent them as much as possible.
Treatment
Calves with scour should be removed from the rest of the group. This is done for several reasons.
Removing these calves prevents the infection from spreading to other calves and also makes it easier to control. Furthermore, it makes it easier to handle and treat the sick calf.
To help with rehydration, electrolytes should be fed to the calf twice daily. This should be fed alongside milk/milk replacer.
Continuing to feed the sick calf milk is important for energy and nutrients, it will not prolong or worsen the scour.
Scour control
As the saying goes. prevention is better than cure. You will find it hard to completely eliminate scour on your farm, but you can reduce its impact.
Before calves enter the shed and after they leave it, the shed should be thoroughly disinfected.
This can be difficult to achieve on farms where spilt-calving seasons are operated, but this is where a compact calving has an upper hand.
If scour is an issue, take samples and have them analysed. This will allow you to select a disinfectant that kills the bacterium, parasite or virus in question.
Ensure that all feeders are kept clean during the rearing period as bacteria can easily build up on feeders that are not cleaned.
It is extremely important that you check the teats on the feeders as these can harbour bacteria.
One of the most important measures for a calf shed is controlled access; people coming onto the farm can introduce bacteria to the calves.
So, access should be control to the shed and there should also be a disinfectant point at the entrance.