Cattle husbandry is at the heart of maintaining a healthy herd.
Dr. Thach Winslow, a beef technical consultant for Elanco Animal Health, defines cattle husbandry as the responsible housing, feeding, breeding, and care of livestock.
“They’re all cross-related, each enhancing the others,” he says. “For example, responsible housing protects cattle from weather extremes, while allowing for feed delivery, safe calving, and easy access and handling of animals if intervention is needed.”
In adverse weather conditions, a pasture with good wind breaks or low spots allows cattle to escape the wind. Other housing necessities include access to feed or pasture, the ability to separate animals if needed, and readily accessible facilities to aid in the delivery of a calf or treat for disease.
“Typically, pasture utilization and animal location are designed around scheduled calving seasons, maximizing our ability to manage feed resources and ensuring a uniform calf crop. We don’t typically want the bulls with the cows year-round,” Winslow says.
Another critical component of animal husbandry is nutrition because it impacts growth and fertility, and therefore, production.
During a cow’s annual cycle, energy requirements, nutritional needs, and body condition scores can vary from breeding through gestation to calving.
“It is important to ensure that breeding cows are on a positive plane of nutrition for 30 days before and following calving. If she’s on a positive plane of nutrition before calving, she will come into heat sooner and be ready to breed back sooner than if she’s on a negative plane of nutrition,” Winslow says. “With a positive plane of nutrition post calving, breeding cows tend to have a higher conception rate on their first heat. Cows that breed back sooner will wean larger calves and tend to remain in the herd longer.”
Cow nutrition can be more complex than determining body condition scores and adjusting rations around calving. For example, with seasonal grazing, pasture conditions vary and supplemental feeding may be necessary. A critical component of animal care is the use of ionophores, which can increase feed efficiency 5-10% and enhance care by preventing coccidiosis, reducing calf diarrhea and immune system suppression.
Similarly, vaccines and calving management, including the environment, aid in disease prevention of scours, (a viral, bacterial or protozoan infection causing diarrhea) that infects calves at an early age.
“When people ask what causes scours, I say dirty teats, right? Because when you have mud and manure on the cows’ teats, those nursing calves are exposed to the organisms that live in the manure at a high rate,” Winslow says. We can manage that.
Whether or not an infected calf develops scours and its severity depend on factors including immunity, vaccination, weather and facilities.
“While we may have fed an ionophore for coccidia control, did we ensure that the calf was up and nursing in the first four hours of life, or was nursing delayed? Colostrum intake makes a huge difference in calves’ immunity and ability to combat disease,” he says. “Did we protect the calf from the extremes, or did we fail to minimize immune-compromising stress factors? “
Further, did the calf’s mother produce enough high-quality colostrum for that calf to nurse? Was she vaccinated, boosting her immunity and ensuring she had adequate antibodies to pass on to her calf?
“Data shows that health performance in the feedlot can be tied back to the quality of colostrum that the calf got from its mother at birth,” Winslow says.
Equally important is genetics. While a high yearling weight is desired because ranchers are growing calves to make beef, responsible genetics dictate that adjustments be made for optimum cattle health, maternal traits, disposition, and longevity.
“A high weaning weight can also mean a high birth weight, which may result in calving difficulty. There’s a balance there, and we need to plan our genetics,” Winslow says. “We’re not going to put a high weaning weight bull on young heifers that haven’t fully developed and cannot have a large calf.”
Balanced genetic selection includes prioritizing bulls whose genetics promote growth and good carcass qualities while producing heifers with acceptable birth weight genetics and good milk production to wean a heavy calf. Artificial insemination is a great tool to rapidly advance a herd’s maternal genetics in the early-born calves while allowing bulls with good growth and carcass traits to sire later-born calves for feeding.
“As we seek to responsibly house, feed, breed, and care for our livestock, we must also balance the integration of products with practices by using only the right products in the right animals at the right time: no more and no less. In doing so, we set them up for a lifetime of health and productivity,” Winslow adds. “The same concepts apply to parasite management and mitigation, fly control, and Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD), which kills more cattle in the U.S. than all other diseases of cattle combined.”
Elanco is a global leader in animal health, striving to help farmers and ranchers deliver a sustainable supply of safe, affordable beef through products and services that prevent, treat, and control cattle diseases while improving performance and production. Elanco is also committed to enabling the beef industry’s success by providing resources to help manage health, enhance economic performance, and promote operational sustainability.
For more information, visit Elanco.com or contact your local Elanco representative.
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