At the 2007 WCA Winter Conference, in February, Dr. Kathy Bandyk, nutritionist for Quality Liquid Feeds, addressed cow-calf producers about management opportunities that will give the best return on calves.

Preventative health is the most important management practices for producers.

"We care about preventative health because its benefit is more calves to sell if we can reduce that death loss," she said. "We'll get heavier calves if we keep them growing through the pre-weaning stage. We all know healthy calves, if you take them to the sale barn, sell better."

"It's always better to keep cattle healthy than to make them healthy again," she said. "Colostrum is that absolute essential first.

"Calves that didn't have an opportunity to take in adequate colostrum are almost five and a half times more likely to die before they were weaned," she said. "Obviously that's a huge impact on our bottom line."

Calves that don't receive sufficient colostrum are six and a half times more likely to get sick in the first two weeks after birth, and 3 times more likely to get sick sometime before weaning. Calves that get sick or have been sick perform much worse than healthy calves, and can ultimately decrease the value of the calf.

Producers can gain as much as 35 pounds of live gain pre-weaning, if calves receive adequate colostrum.

Parasite control is also important because it does have an economic impact. Current research show it is "economically sound to control" worms, lice, ticks and flies.

Source: Livestock Roundup