Drought Effects on Calves ?

[Stocker Steve]

Had a 50 year drought last year. Hope this year is different. Hearing a lot of stories now on weak calves. Some are trying Multimin injections for the first time. Is a weak calf problem usually due to inadequate protein, or are there many other causes?

 

[redcowsrule33]

Energy has a big effect too. Calves born to cows on a low energy but adequate protein diet have a higher stillborn rate and lower survivability to weaning. They also produce less body heat after birth which in our cold climate can take them down quickly.

 

[bird dog]

What age group of calves are you referring to?

 

[Stocker Steve]

New borns

 

[bird dog]

Lack of adequate minerals in the cow is the way it has always been explained to me. A vet once told me if the dam is lacking, she won't have as much energy to push and the calf stays to long in the birth canal.

 

[1982vett]

I didn't see weak calves or calving problems in 2011…but I didn't have a nutrition problem either, just a green forage problem. The hay I had was adequate and the cows went through plenty.

Only hindsight said I should have sold the cows AND hay rather than keeping and feeding both till they were doth almost all gone.

 

[snoopdog]

I didn't see weak calves or calving problems in 2011…but I didn't have a nutrition problem either, just a green forage problem. The hay I had was adequate and the cows went through plenty.

Only hindsight said I should have sold the cows AND hay rather than keeping and feeding both till they were doth almost all gone.

We sold out that year, cows, and hay. Very good decision, but its a hard one.

 

[J Hoy]

In a study published in Nature a highly esteemed scientific journal, an insecticide called Imidacloprid which falls on all foliage everywhere in rain and snow, even far from where it is used, was found to cause low energy, mortality in both newborns and adults, and birth defects and failure to thrive in the newborns. The study was done on a grazing animal, white-tailed deer. It would seem likely that the same effects could happen on exposed cattle, sheep, goats or other domestic grazing animals, including equines and camelids.

There seems to be quite a lot of deer born with an underdeveloped lower jaw (overbite) in midwestern and eastern states as suggested by the many photos of deer with overbite on the Internet. I have seen quite a few photos posted on the Internet (including Cattletoday) of calves of many breeds with an underbite. Overbite and underbite were just two of the birth defects found by the study on newborn fawns exposed to Imidacloprid during development. (Berheim, E.H., Jenks, J.A., Lundgren, J.G., Michel, E.S., Grove, D., Jensen, W.F., 2019. Effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on physiology and reproductive characteristics of captive female and fawn white-tailed deer. Sci. Rep.9:4534. https:// doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40994-9.)

If Imidacloprid is causing the loss of thousands or possibly millions of calves each year, wouldn't it be a good idea for everyone to stop using it. Another study was just published that found multiple Neonicotinoid insecticides, including Imidacloprid in the cerebro-spinal fluid of human children. Nothing to be concerned about there though. Tiny exposures of Neonicotinoids do cause brain damage to birds and bees, but it couldn't do that to children, right? Wrong - it may be doing even worse things to newborn children. This was from an article about what Imidacloprid might be doing to children.
"Birth defects of the brain of human newborns - A study of a population of mothers in California's San Joaquin valley reported a suggestive association between living near agriculture areas that use Imidacloprid and an almost 3-fold elevated risk of having a baby born with anencephaly, lacking parts of the brain and skull (adjusted odds ratio 2.9, 95% confidence interval 1.0, 8.2 based on 73 cases of anencephaly) (Yang et al. 2014)."

Saving children may save your calves or vice versa, depending on which ones you value most!