A fast time is crucial to winning a race. Newborn calf care is a lot like a race: The faster you get quality colostrum in calves, the sooner they’ll start to build immunity through antibodies known as immunoglobulins.

During the process of setting up our herd management software, I spend a lot of time in the pen with herdsmen learning their record-keeping systems. As a standard, we customize our program on the dairy’s computer and on the staff’s mobile devices to their procedures, specific to each dairy farm.

The virtues of colostrum in successful calf raising cannot be overemphasized. This “liquid gold” not only delivers critical immune protection but also provides specialized nutrients, energy, fluid and warmth to newborn calves.

Hot weather and flies tend to go hand-in-hand, but there are measures you can take to limit fly populations in the summer months. Pre-weaned calves are especially susceptible to the detrimental effects of flies because they often live in confined spaces and cannot escape a fly-infested environment.

Colostrum is undoubtedly one of the most important feeding practices for newborn calves. Sound, well-communicated protocols are often put into place to ensure successful passive transfer of immunity and a healthy start for the newborn calf. But as time passes and changes are made to the employee team, protocols and attention to detail can fall through the cracks.