 Hi, my name is Jana Block. I'm an NDSU Extension Livestock Specialist based at the Heading and Research Extension Center, and today I'm going to be talking about weaning considerations for healthy calves. So when you think about weaning, we definitely associate that with stress, and that can be stressed both on our cattle and on you, the producer. The types of stress that the cattle will experience include social, feed, and environmental. Social stress, obviously removing them from the dam and everything they've ever known, commingling with calves from other pasture groups, and just throwing them together. They have introductions to novel feeds that they haven't used before. We have a whole new environment possibly, whether that's a new pasture or a dry lot, and they have to discover where their feed and water sources are and just get used to that whole basically new way of life. They show responses to this stress by increasing the time that they're walking or standing versus lying down, possibly going off water and feed, which you can observe because they're so busy just walking fences and vocalizing. And so just like people, cattle have stress hormones, and when these hormone levels are increased in their body, they can have a negative influence on immune system and overall health and performance of the calves. So our goal is to try to minimize this response as much as possible. So we'll talk a little bit about some of the different weaning strategies they're utilized, and you may use these in whole as they're presented today, or you can take bits and pieces of little ones and modify them as needed. There's lots of different options. And so with traditional weaning, we're typically thinking about an abrupt separation from the dam and again, experiencing all those changes that I discussed in the previous slide. The advantages of this system is that we can sell calves immediately. They can be weaned on the truck or at the ranch and then shipped to the market. It obviously would result in reduced need for feed for weaned calves and potentially reduce our labor and facility needs if those calves are not maintained on the ranch. So disadvantages would be obviously maximum level of stress. Caves are usually balling for three to five days. They're walking fence line. They could potentially walk up to 10 to 12 miles a day. And they're going to eat less feed, which can result in fairly high shrink at the time of the sale. With fence line weaning, calves are placed in a pasture or dry lot pen next to their dam. So they can still see and hear their dam even though they can't nurse. So this will reduce the environmental stress on that calf. You will see calves typically hanging around that fence line and close to their dams the first few days and then that will start to reduce as time goes on and they'll start to wander out further. Obviously with this strategy, you have to have good fences to prevent nursing or to prevent those calves and cows reuniting. And when you look at the data on fence line weaning, it's extremely variable and it really seems like the best response occurs when calves have access to high quality feeds. And so this might be a strategy where you implement feeding pairs prior to weaning, either a total mixed ration or a supplement of some kind and getting those calves used to eating either on the ground or in a feed bunk. That seems to really be a function of whether or not this method will increase average daily gain. Two-stage weaning is another weaning method that's been utilized by more and more by many people. So in this strategy we utilize a nose flap that prevents nursing for around four to five days up to a week. Typically the longer those nose flaps are applied. The increased percentage for kind of some nose irritation, possibly some abscesses if they are left in for a much longer period. The idea of this strategy is that they're getting used to their new diet and possibly a new environment without the stress of being separated from law. So research has shown you can have some cheaters through this strategy. They kind of learn to nurse around the nose flaps. That incident should be fairly low. Other disadvantage potentially of this strategy is it does require several more trips down the chute. You have to put calves down the chute to apply and remove the nose flaps. At advantages you can use the nose flaps for multiple years and they're fairly inexpensive. When we look at the data comparing this method to either fence line weaning or traditional weaning have shown some decreased stress in those calves. Some studies have shown that the stress is just maybe minimized or a little bit spread out because there can be some frustration by those calves when they're trying to nurse and are not able to. And so the stress may be lower than complete separation but there is still a little bit there. Can see an increase in immune function again just being near the dam and removing some of that environmental issue. But in terms of overall performance response, again, variation in average daily gain sometimes lower, sometimes higher, sometimes no difference compared to conventional weaning. So the things to think about are the type and quality of feed offered. This might be a really good time to supplement as with fence line weaning, supplement pairs ahead of time and get those calves consuming feed so they'll readily go to feed rather than just worrying about why they're not able to nurse. Other factors that might influence this is the age of the calf at weaning and milk production of the dam. And so typically older calves that are maybe a little bit less reliant on milk from the dam could respond better to this procedure. Pasture weaning is considered a low stress weaning method. Again, just keeping calves in that familiar type of pasture environment versus a dry lot and you can use this in combination with any of the other weaning methods I discussed. Typical recommendation would be to move cows pairs to a new pasture at least seven days before weaning and then remove the cows leaving calves on that familiar pasture. A very strong consideration here is the quality of the pasture calves do have extremely high nutrient requirements and they can't just be out on low quality dormant forage. So you have to have some type of regrowth either on a hay field or a pasture, possibly utilizing an annual forage and consider adding a supplement based on the laboratory analysis of that forage. Continuing on with nutrition, if we're talking about a dry lot feeding strategy, obviously want to start out with feeds that are very familiar to the calves and so long stem grass hay is going to resemble grasses that cattle consume down on pasture. Slowly you've been utilizing creep feed with those calves so either bring their creep feeder into the pen or put creep in their bunk for that first five to seven days or so until that stress is kind of reduced and then you can start to top dress your grain mixture or start to adapt your calves slowly over maybe a several week period to a total mixed ration. It's important to remember that the microbial population of cattle take some time to acclimate and so you definitely want to work cattle up slowly, start to develop their taste for different feeds and also give a chance for that rumen to acclimate to avoid health issues and also just ease that transition. There's lots of different options that will work as far as diets and feeds in backgrounding rations. You can have a low percentage to a high percentage of roughage just depending on what you have available. The important thing is to look overall we need crude protein between 1014% typically and the TDN or energy content should be between 60 and 65% for those weaned calves. Another consideration that we may not focus on enough is to make sure that there is high quality clean water readily available and so in a dry lot situation might want to think about adding a few additional water sources and again just making sure those are clean and not contaminated with manure and that will also help increase health of those calves. You should see calves start to eat between 2.5 to 3% of their body weight within several weeks of weaning. One way to ensure this is occurring is to make sure that bunk space is adequate. These bunk space recommendations are similar to what you might see for a mature cow but you have to think about timid calves that may not approach the bunk if they have any type of competition and so just making sure they have lots of space to spread out and access feed is really important particularly in that weaning period. Ionophores can help with feed efficiency and also help you avoid digestive issues if you're feeding a higher concentrate ration so that's definitely a consideration and then making sure that you're providing some type of vitamin and mineral supplement that will help with immune function and overall performance. We know that there's a lot of factors that can influence health of weaned calves. One that we kind of take for granted is that transfer of passive immunity from the dam to the calf at birth through colostrum and so if we have that failure of passive transfer there's been enough research that has documented increased morbidity and mortality in beef and dairy calves if that colostrum quality or quantity isn't adequate and so really health of weaned calves technically starts at birth and that's one place that we can really possibly step in and kind of intervene and get some improvement if we seem to be having issues with weaned calves year after year. Nutritional stress prior to weaning can really influence those calves possibly if forage conditions have been inadequate maybe milk production has been decreasing. When those calves are on a lower plane of nutrition they're just not feeling their best possibly have some sickness issues and so it's a good idea to think about kind of increasing that plane of nutrition prior to weaning if forage conditions have been poor so maybe by providing some creep feed or additional supplements to calves on pasture with their dams. Temperature fluctuations can really get to calves during weaning. Cold nights followed by sunny warm days that can really influence their health and then of course dust conditions if you are dealing with dust it's a good idea to get a sprinkler system in place and potentially wet down that pen on a daily basis or every other day just depending on what conditions look like but keeping that dust down is definitely beneficial. Then when we're thinking about commingling if you're able to wean by pasture group and keep those calves within their same social structure that they're used to that can be really beneficial if not some data suggests that bringing everybody together into a common herd and just giving several weeks of time together prior to weaning can really help reestablish social structure and kind of acclimate them to different organisms that they have experienced in different pastures throughout the summer. Other considerations in terms of health you do want to go ahead and deworm those calves they're at a very high risk for parasite infestation which obviously lead to impacts on feed intake immune function etc so deworming at the earliest date prior to weaning is going to be beneficial and then consulting with your veterinarian on a vaccine regimen obviously that's going to vary by each ranch but in general we're going to be providing some protection against cluster deal and BRD pathogens. The value of low stress handling or good stockmanship really is it can't be understated when it comes to these weaned calves there's really nothing we can give them to help with the stress of weaning but the way that we handle those calves can really influence the way that they're adapting to their new environment and their new feedstuffs and so we want to be gentle quiet and just eliminate you know any aggressive type of behaviors yelling shouting moving the animals to cook quickly things like that. Because it will help the cattle adapt more quickly and it's going to help them gain better these are all things to consider and limiting try to limiting the number of stressors that the cattle are experiencing at one time so wrapping things up here when we're thinking about having successful weaning and good healthy calves that will gain as you want them to we need to make sure they have a good start in life get access to adequate amount of high quality colostrum try to minimize stressors that they experience before and after weaning have a good health management plan in place that we've developed with our veterinarian and have good facilities available and practice good stockmanship with that I'll wish you good luck on your weaning and feel free to reach out if you have any questions or if I can provide any additional information thanks for listening