By vet Jemma Reed
It has been well documented in the farming press about the benefits and importance of getting colostrum into dairy calves as soon as possible after birth in order to maximise their immune status and set them off with the best start in life.
More recently further research has been undertaken which has found many benefits in extended colostrum feeding.
Firstly, extended colostrum feeding can mean feeding transition milk (the 2nd to 8th milkings after calving) or adding true first milking colostrum or colostrum replacer to milk replacer or whole milk for a minimum of 4 up to 14 days of a calf’s life.
Colostrum, as well as containing the immunoglobulins that are so important to the newborn calf, also contains many factors that benefit a calf in the first weeks of life which have also been shown to impact that animal’s life time health and performance. Factors include antibodies, oligosaccharides, fatty acids, insulin and insulin-like growth factor, microRNAs and lactoferrin that provide local gut immunity and help reduce the effect of gut infections and may also enhance gut development. Therefore, it makes sense in dairy heifer replacements that are the future of your dairy herd to consider it.
One of the first things to think of before you put an extended colostrum policy feeding protocol in place is, ‘What is the disease risk of my herd’? Advice has always been feed only the dam’s colostrum to her own calf to reduce disease spread. But when extended colostrum feeding is used, then pooling colostrum or transition milk is the most practical solution in most instances. However, this incurs risks of the transmission of various diseases such as Johne’s, Mycoplasma and Salmonella to name but a few.
When pooling colostrum or transition milk, pasteurisation (60C for 60 minutes) reduces the risk when these diseases are present, but obviously incurs a significant financial investment purchasing a pasteuriser.
An alternative to feeding cow colostrum is the addition of a colostrum replacer to milk. Beware as all colostrum replacers are not the same - for this to work well it needs to be a product made from actual bovine colostrum with high levels of immunoglobulin and ideally not a synthetic product. The benefit with a colostrum replacer is that disease risks are minimised. There are also commercially available transition milk replacers that can be used instead of adding colostrum or colostrum replacer to whole milk or milk replacer.
Suggestions for how to put extended colostrum feeding into practice using farm colostrum include: freezing first milk colostrum in ice cube trays and adding 2 or 3 large ice cubes to each feed (time and labour intensive); mixing first milk colostrum into whole milk at a 1:1 mix or feeding transition milk.
Issues can come with the storage of colostrum, so ideally all colostrum and transition milk is fed fresh, so that its quality is not affected by bacteria that can proliferate at room temperature. In the vast majority of cases, feeding fresh colostrum all of the time is not feasible, therefore, looking at ways to store colostrum effectively needs to be undertaken. Suggested methods of storage include: refrigeration at 4C for up to 5 days (in clean buckets with a lid) or
freezing at -20C for 6-12 months (in colostrum bags or ice cube trays). Care needs to be taken too when defrosting – do not use a microwave! It is also possible to chemically preserve colostrum using e.g. potassium sorbate to extend its shelf life, but care needs to be taken doing this.
Due to the issues on farm with the volume of first colostrum or transition milk available, disease and storage issues, in a lot of cases feeding a transition milk replacer or supplementing milk with colostrum replacer is the most practical option. These should be fed according to manufacturer recommendation.