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May Calving

Ben H

Well-known member
How many days are you palpating, or are you using Ultrasound? If so how many days?

I bred for a May/June Calving season this year. I have two concerns with it. Lower weaning weight, so when are you weaning, what weight goal for may/june calving?

Also, since I had a bed outbreak of pinkeye this year and plan on vaccinating, I think the may/june calves will be too young to vaccinate before the pressure hits. Maybe I'm wrong.
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
Ben H... We had a goup of late may born calves one year that had pink eye problems but they started later than the rest.. Talked to the vet about and he suggessted that we hit the young calves twice with the vaccine... Basically, we vaccinatd the calves with their first shots June 10th or something like that and than when we did the boosters in early July we hit the youngest calves again with pink eye... Really knocked it down..

We had almost zero pinkeye problems this year.. Don't know if it was improved minerals or the vaccine we gave but it might have been both, god knows the flies were something fierce this summer and it was dry and dusty..
Good luck with the May/June calving.. We are going to April 15th/June 1st calving now although I think the bulls were out till September 1st which would be more like June 10th for last calf next year.. WE just ultrasounded on Wed and Thursday.. One of the vets can do them very young with the ultrasound but the other is not as experienced.. We are their biggest cow client by far so they don't get too many long days pregging. She actualyl had an easier time this year on the late breds vs the early ones and of course the second calvers were easier than the older ones for her too.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Good mineral DOES make a difference.

The difference is in having an enhanced IMMUNE system so the calves
can naturally fight off the pinkeye alng with lots of other things.

Good luck to you!
 

Shorthornguy

Well-known member
For us pinkeye comes and goes . This year was bad because of the drought and lots of flies?????????????? Don't know why. 1992 was the worst year for pinkeye. Cool dry summer and lots of flies. When I was in Dairy we vaccinated hiefers every year. Fky blocks don't seem to help.
All you can do is vaccinate...Keep an eye on them and treat them as soon as you spot a problem...good luck.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Pinkeye can be from different things. Pinkeye is
a symptom of IBR. Usually if you get a real bad outbreak,
it's from something more than flies. IMO
 

Denny

Well-known member
We had ALOT of flies this summer and 1 cow that got pinkeye and we never treated her,plus no foot rot at all this was on 150 pairs and 40 yearling's.Mineral is the number one thing we did this year over last year and last year we did alot of treating.One thing bad with a good mineral program is your horses don't get rode much.
 

Ben H

Well-known member
I'll be calving less then 20. No, I'm not forgetings a zero. This summer I started using a free choice mineral mix for beef cattle. I buy it with the salt in it to regulate intake. There is room for improvement in how and when I give it to them. I'm sure IBR is one of the things covered with Cattlemaster/Bovishield that we have been using. I considered the pinkeye vaccination this spring but ended up not bothering. I didn't want to spend the money on a problem I'd never had. STUPID move.

The thought has crossed my mind to let you people handle the cow-calf and go with stockers durring the grazing season.

Minerals is something I've thought about with the immune system for a while. I work for a company that injects goats with human antigens, the goats have an immune response and create antibodies against the antigens. We then bring the serum to the lab (red blood cells get mixed with saline and returned to goats) where it is refined to be monospecific (contains only one anitbody) We produce Anti IgA, IgG, IgM, Albumin, Heptaglobin, Transferring, and a bunch more.
The husbandry is done by another company we lease the facility from, we own the goats. I want to audit the feed, put the numbers in my computer, specfically looking to see if the mineral balance is being met. The recieve grain and hay. From my experience, it's hard to meet the micronutrient requirements without a free-choice mineral. The hay certainly doesn't cut it, and feed companies are limited on what they can add to the grain. They feed a plain white salt block in the feeders, I know that doesn't help. If the micro-nutriend balance isn't being met, I can't see how the immune system can function to it's fullest potential. Anyone remember exactly what minerals effect the immune system?
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Copper. Zinc. Selinum. Vitamin E. All the traces contribute to
the immune system that's why they are in there.

Goats must have copper. Vigortone makes a special mineral
for goats, otherwise I wouldn't know as I don't know anything
about goats. :p I'll see what I can find in my information about
goat mineral. I know it is a different blend.

What really has a lot to do with immune system is colostrum.
Livestock need a good quality colostrum for a heathly life
and the right mineral has everything to do with good quality
colostrum.

Hope this helps!
 

Texan

Well-known member
Ben H said:
I considered the pinkeye vaccination this spring but ended up not bothering. I didn't want to spend the money on a problem I'd never had. STUPID move.
Don't beat yourself up too bad over not using the vaccine, Ben. I know some people that vaccinate for pinkeye and they still have more trouble than I do and I've never vaccinated for it.

If we used every vaccine that the drug companies and drug-peddling vets said we needed, we could easily vaccinate ourselves out of the cattle business because there wouldn't be any money left for us.
 

Denny

Well-known member
Texan said:
Ben H said:
I considered the pinkeye vaccination this spring but ended up not bothering. I didn't want to spend the money on a problem I'd never had. STUPID move.
Don't beat yourself up too bad over not using the vaccine, Ben. I know some people that vaccinate for pinkeye and they still have more trouble than I do and I've never vaccinated for it.

If we used every vaccine that the drug companies and drug-peddling vets said we needed, we could easily vaccinate ourselves out of the cattle business because there wouldn't be any money left for us.

I 2nd that a friend of mine vaccinated for pinkeye 2 years in a row and had it terrible quit useing it and has'nt seen near the problems go figure.
 
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