There’s a common misconception that calves should receive colostrum from their own mother (dam) or herd to ensure protection against any pathogens present on the farm where they were born.
The fact is that high quality, whole, colostrum replacers will provide protection from diseases (anywhere in the world) and should be considered in any colostrum management program.
Consider the concept of ‘herd immunity’, which builds on the observation that pathogens circulating on a farm will boost immune responses of the animals in that herd to those pathogens.
What ‘herd immunity’ doesn’t guarantee is that 100% of the cows on the farm will receive an effective natural boost through exposure to all infectious agents, at the appropriate time, to generate high colostrum antibodies.
Therefore, the most important factor to consider is whether a particular cow has, or has not, been exposed to a given calf pathogen prior to giving birth.
If she has, she will secrete antibodies against that pathogen into her colostrum and that colostrum (if fed correctly) should provide good protection.
If she hasn’t (even if she is the mother), there would be no boost in antibody titers and that colostrum could be deficient in antibodies to that pathogen.
When testing individual pails of colostrum for the presence of specific antibodies, it is not uncommon to find cows that lack antibodies to one or more of the important pathogens causing disease in calves, even though those pathogens are present on the farm.
Furthermore, the assumption that the mother’s colostrum is always better may lead us to believe that antibodies present in colostrum from the mother, or another cow from the same herd, have antibodies to some kind of ‘private’ strain of infectious agent, which is not present in other regions or countries. There is no epidemiological evidence to support this.
The fact is that common causes of calf morbidity and mortality during the first three weeks of life are pneumonias and diarrhoeas, caused by pathogens capable of infecting the respiratory and intestinal mucosal surfaces (see Table 1).
These pathogens are actually world-wide in distribution (only absent in countries with pathogen-specific eradication programs) and antibodies against them have broad cross protection. In other words, these antibodies are effective world-wide.
Can a colostrum replacer or supplement provide benefits, even if herd colostrum is of sufficient quality?
Yes. A major problem with herd colostrum is the variability of both quality and quantity from dam to dam.
Natural colostrum replacers or supplements deliver a consistent amount of IgG, growth factors, and nutrients such as fat, thereby reducing the variation experienced with herd colostrum and offering more consistent calf serum IgG levels.
Colostrum replacers are also easy and convenient to use, enabling calves that are at higher risk of FPT to be fed quickly and receive IgG as well as the colostral fat needed to recover body temperature.
“High risk” calves include:
- those that had a difficult birth
- twins in beef herds
- calves born to first-calf heifers.
And those who had:
- dams that leaked milk from the udder or were milked prior to calving
- beef dams with poor udder or teat conformation, or had small volumes of colostrum
- dams with lower quality colostrum, sick dams, or those slower to recover from calving.