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Pre-Conditioning Shots

T

Triangle Bar

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Jan 24, 2008
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Location
S. Central Colorado
With fall gathering & weaning not too far away....I've been considering whether to pre-condition or not to pre-condition and what to vac. with. For years I've just given a 8-way booster at weaning and that was it. I've never had a train wreck doing this but I don't want to experience one either. That being said, if you can keep your calves healthy through weaning and beyond, you'll maintain a steady rate of gain and greatly reduce doctoring.

Here's my plan, please feel free to pick it apart, make suggestions & share your experiences.

(1) Two weeks prior to weaning, vac. calves with a 8-way booster, ViraShield 5 (or similar product), and back pour.

(2) At weaning, give second Virashield 5 injection.

(3) Keep calves in corral for 10 days to 2 weeks (mommas will go to a pasture 2 miles away), and then turn out on hay meadows.

Happy Trails
 
We do things a fair bit different T-Bar, but here's my two cents worth:

I never like weaning calves in a corral. It's dry, dusty, and the more they pace the fence, the dustier it gets. Could you corral them in a small paddock that has good grass in it? I like to corral the cows, and turn the calves out in a grassy pasture close by. Seems like the calves graze and the cows bawl, instead of the other way round. It's a system that requires some set-up, but if you can coordinate the paddocks to do it, it works great.

We're going to start ours a little different this year. We're going to introduce some pellets pre-weaning, then keep them on swath-grazing post-weaning, while still supplementing the pellets. Haven't decided 100% on the pellet yet, company I've contacted has some options. I don't like grain, so we may go with their alfalfa mix pellet. At least it's something to boost their energy and get them used to feeding, since we'll probably sell half or more over the winter.
 
I guess it depends why you precondition - is it to gain a marketing advantage when selling your calves or just to keep them healthy if you overwinter them? If it's the latter do you really need to precondition?
We have always preconditioned and used a fairly extensive vaccine program (8-way, starvac and somnu-star ph) at spring processing followed by booster shots of the same just prior to weaning. We usually sell the first calves a minimum of 8 weeks after weaning. This system has worked well for us and we have nearly always got rewarded in the marketplace. This keeps the calves healthy but I think it is overkill given the way we fence-line wean our calves and use quiet wean nose paddles. So this year it's all change as we now market most of our calves as yearlings plus the ones we keep for breeding/fattening. We only gave 8 way this spring and will booster with the same at weaning. Waste of time giving a pour-on at that stage in my opinion - no appreciable worm load under our system anyway and we wean before it's cold enough to treat for lice effectively. We do pour the calves once usually in December.
I believe a better physical weaning set up like PC advocates is a cheaper and better solution than vaccine. We run the calves through the chute, give them vaccine, weigh them, put in the quiet wean tags and return them to their mothers in a field with plenty grass preferebly a mix of short high quality grass and some over mature grass. Leave them there for 5-6 days then sort off the calves, pull the nose tags and let the calves out in a field of high quality grass through the fence from the field they just came out of with at least a hot wire between the fields. Kick the cows back in the original field to eat off the remaining low quality grass for about 3-4 days which will pull the milk off them before removing them. Cows will bawl for one night worse than ever - the calves likely won't even answer them as they will be too busy grazing. This has been an excellent program for us - zero stress, zero fuss and zero broken corrals.
That's what works for us anyway.
 
We keep our calves and have tried different things. Currently we vaccinate with 8 way and an IBR/PI3/BVD product at branding time (we don't brand at this point as slick hides are worth a bit more). We also knife castrate at that point. We will also give the cows a pre-breeding vaccine (Express).
Two weeks pre-weaning we will booster the calves with 8 way and the IBR/PI3 product. We have waited until weaning to do this and it is nowhere near as effective.
When we wean, we run the cows and calves into a sorting corral and split the cows back. They go onto one field of grass and the calves go in another. You can wean 100+ head in 10 minutes this way. We do not individually catch/squeeze or otherwise to the calves at any point other than the initial branding at 2 to 10 weeks of age, and even then we only tip the bull calves for castration. This is also when we tag calves.
We brand and collect DNA on potential replacements and grass calves at around 10-12 months of age.
 
Grassfarmer said:
I guess it depends why you precondition - is it to gain a marketing advantage when selling your calves or just to keep them healthy if you overwinter them? If it's the latter do you really need to precondition?
Click to expand...

I'm planning on over wintering them as I'm going to have lots of extra pasture and feed if the pasture gets buried in snow. The hay prices have really dropped in my area, any striped alfalfa is only bringing $60/ton at the stack with no real demand, of course a hard winter might change those prices, but right now putting pounds on calves seems to be a better marketing option for that quality of hay. I'd probably sell 'em this coming spring but I'd rather choose to run 'em the following summer and sell 'em grass fat but that's a long term goal.

PC, Grassfarmer, & RSL you've got me thinkin', which is what I wanted from this post. I would have the ability to vaccinate the calves, put in the easy wean paddles, and put them back with the cows as you suggest. I've already have part of my meadow divided by a two wire hot fence. I could easily put the cows & calves on opposite sides after removing the easy wean devices.

Thanks
 
Glad to have given you something to think on Triangle Bar. Our weaning program requires a little more planning and effort than some systems but we haven't had a sick calf at weaning since we started doing it this way. The extra gains on the calves make it well worth while.

RSL - Do you never scale your calves individually? we like to get a weight on the purebreds and have always done the commercials as well to get an accurate measure of the cows performance. Weaning weight isn't all that important to me from the calves perspective (other than the obvious dinks that are too small for the purpose intended) but it has identified a number of cows over the years that just scrape by turning in a below average calf every year. We use it as another tool to decide who to cull.
 
Grassfarmer said:
Glad to have given you something to think on Triangle Bar. Our weaning program requires a little more planning and effort than some systems but we haven't had a sick calf at weaning since we started doing it this way. The extra gains on the calves make it well worth while.

RSL - Do you never scale your calves individually? we like to get a weight on the purebreds and have always done the commercials as well to get an accurate measure of the cows performance. Weaning weight isn't all that important to me from the calves perspective (other than the obvious dinks that are too small for the purpose intended) but it has identified a number of cows over the years that just scrape by turning in a below average calf every year. We use it as another tool to decide who to cull.
Click to expand...

GF - we are just rebuilding chute and scale next year. Our chute system was built in the 1950s and we had never owned a squeeze until 3 years ago when we bought a portable handling system. We still don't and won't have a squeeze in our main working chute. The plan is to have the scale in place at that point. It has historically not been too hard to identify problem cows and obvious dink producers, but we are getting more sophisticated all the time.
 
I like to wait a few days after weaning to give second shots. I think the less stress on weaning day the better.
 
I give a round of Bovishield and Ultra Choice 8 as branding shots and then don't give anything else until the day I wean. That way, I only have to pen pairs once for weaning.

A couple of weeks before weaning, I start caking cows a little bit so that they can teach their calves how to eat cake. On weaning day, I pull the calves and give them another Bovishield and One Shot Ultra 8 (8-way with pasturella) and pour them with Cydectin.

I turn them out into 1-2 acre grass traps just across the fence from the cows so they can socialize. I put a few rolls of hay out in hay rings along the fences, as well as some mineral troughs around the fences - anything to provide a little distraction from the walking helps.

After a couple of days, the cows are gone and I turn the calves out into a larger trap. By that time they're eating cake really well and are easy to handle when I get them back in for another Bovishield and Ultra Choice 8, plus another pour, three or four weeks later.

This is really a pretty low-stress deal for the cows, calves and people. And I can't remember the last time I've treated a home-raised calf after weaning. Giving them some space and getting them out onto grass as soon as possible is the key.
 
I usually don't wean till february or so-they just lick snow and bale graze with their mommas out in the fields-due to this dr. deal I might just sell the big end off the cows and just keep the tiger stripes and heifers to winter.
 
We castrate at birth with elastics. Then at pasture turnout they get Oneshot, Bovishield Gold 5, and Resvac/somubac for blackleg and haemophilus. Since we buy feeders also, we like to vaccinate them for everything major.
When they come home from pasture, we let them out in the corn field for a week or two. They need to come in to the corral to drink, so they get used to doing that pretty quick. A couple of days before we wean them we put hay in the corral. Then we shut the gate one evening and lock the whole herd out. In the morning they're waiting at the gate. We let them in, and it doesn't take the cows long to figure out they're being had. They zip back out pretty fast, and the calves are easy to keep back. They sort themselves, and we just watch the gate. We usually get most cows out without even chasing, but don't mind leaving one or two back as role models for the calves.

After that, the calves stay there until they don't care about momma any more. The cows can come and visit, but since we then allow them to go to water at the creek a half mile away, the visits taper off fast. After the calves are weaned, they go to their proper pens, and get booster shots at that time. We haven't had sickness problems yet, and they've had some pretty good challenges from the auction mart riff raff over the fence in the feeder pens.

Works for us. 8)
 

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