Episode 368 - Does a Second Colostrum Feeding Make a Difference? - UMN Extension's The Moos Room

Welcome to the Moos Room. Another nice week here in Western Minnesota, and we've been calving like crazy. We have lots of Angus and Angus by dairy crosses on the ground. That's kind of the neat little thing that we're working on now, and it's kind of interesting to see those calves as they're growing.

Eh, I'm not sure that these purebred Angus calves like being fed eight liters. Um, you can tell that they have lots of unrewarded visits to the auto feeder, and they want more milk. And the ones that are drinking ad libitum, they're around twelve to thirteen liters. So it's kind of interesting to see the behavior as those calves grow and what's gonna happen with those into the future.

But today, I wanted to talk about a study that was done here at the University of Minnesota, done in the vet school by Whitney Knauer. It was really evaluating second colostrum feeding in newborn calves. And so the idea was to see how offering a second colostrum meal via bottle or tube feeding affected their immunity, health, and behavior And so let's dive into that study a little bit because really, you know, providing the second feeding of maternal colostrum is kind of widely accepted in the dairy industry and for dairy calf management, and usually happens around eight to 12 hours after birth.

Obviously, you want to try to increase IgGs and have high serum total proteins in those calves because that sort of helps them get into lactation earlier. You have less health problems, and you're able to achieve hopefully higher milk production. So the idea was to evaluate this management practice. So this University of Minnesota group, uh, looked at 150 newborn dairy and dairy beef cross calves, and they were on a commercial dairy in Minnesota that milked about 3,000 cows.

So they tracked serum IgG, health scores, feed intakes, and physical activity. So they used accelerometers on calves for the first three days of life. And really, it-- this study was kind of interesting. It may challenge some of the standard assumptions we have regarding serum total proteins and calf appetites and maybe some-- a little bit about tube feeding safety.

So the first thing they looked at was kind of this IgG, uh, phenomenon coming out of colostrum when more colostrum doesn't necessarily mean more immunity. So I think the study most unexpected finding was that providing a second feeding of maternal colostrum or colostrum replacer eight hours after calving really failed to find any meaningful differences in serum IgG levels 24 hours later after they compared it to a control group that didn't receive any non-IgG milk replacer.

So across these 150 calves, they looked at 24-hour IgG concentrations

Really the average here was about 39, that's grams per liter. Uh, the control group, they received a second meal that really consisted of milk replacer only via a nipple bottle, and they had a serum IgG of 37.8. So really in comparison, the calves that received a second meal had nearly identical levels of serum IgG compared to calves that did not.

They were all around 39, 38 to a colostrum replacement bottle, they were at 37. So they were all really high and did quite well Compared to all of the other calves. So there was really no difference, and that was the maybe unexpected finding. So we kind of dive in a little bit to understand the baseline of this herd.

Well, so this study took place in a very elite, highly managed commercial dairy where calves receive an aggressive colostrum protocol. So kind of the average dose is 290 grams of IgG that's delivered at about 9% of the body weight, and it's tube-fed within 60 minutes of birth. So by eight hours of age, serum IgG levels had already reached an average of 32 grams per liter across calves.

So it was already high. So this aggressive colostrum protocol that these farms had was really helping calves no matter what, and maybe feeding this extra colostrum eight hours later maybe really didn't do what it was supposed to do. So it really come down to they received high quality colostrum already, so it was not any meaningful difference to have fed eight hours later another colostrum feening-- feeding

But we have to be assured that making sure to get high quality colostrum in right away, like this farm was doing sixty minutes after birth, they were getting it in and was really helping out. So any sort of delay beyond two hours after birth maybe can cause some issues. So there was an- another one that they kind of looked at, and that was tube feeding.

So basically, it found a second tube feeding of meals is maybe safer than what people fear. So obviously, there's a lot of concern regarding second feeding colostrums with an esophageal tube, uh, for lots of different reasons. Bacteria, the calf is already full, you get colic, some other problems, maybe bloat, uh, and all of those, um, things that come along with it.

So maybe that's why people don't necessarily feed that second feeding of colostrum to prevent some of these issues, colic, bloat, especially, uh, with these calves. But this study sort of really demonstrated that the fear was really unfounded when actually proper meal sizing and time intervals are maintained.

So over the seventy-two hours or three days, this farm staff recorded no colic events across all hundred and fifty calves and really didn't have many other health risks, so they didn't find any, um, abnormal fecal scores for calves. Total health scores were the same, whether they were fed more a second feeding or not

And obviously, this trial proves that the second esophageal feeding was really safe when two parameters were enforced. So two things to do. That's maintain an eight-hour gap between the meals to allow for basically stomach emptying and sizing the feeding appropriately to the birth weight. So three liters for calves that are sixty to seventy-five pounds and four liters for calves that are much larger.

So if you have smaller calves, you wanna feed about three liters, larger calves four liters, and maintain an eight-hour gap between feedings. So another takeaway was-- So they talked about tube feeding and bottle feeding with a nipple. So obviously, nipple bottles is frequently favored because of voluntary suckling, lets calves self-regulate intake, and helps maintain normal appetite.

However, the study kind of revealed a management drawback, and that was kind of widespread voluntary hungerness at eight hours of age. So when offered a second feeding via nipple bottle for up to fifteen minutes, a lot of the calves refused a portion of their meal, and they only consumed about sixty-five to seventy percent of what was offered.

So these calves are voluntarily refusing all of the meal because they're probably full. But by voluntary refusing some of these, some of these bottle-fed calves missed out on the intended antibody dose, and they received significantly less total IgG than the tube-fed calves, where they got a hundred percent of the, the volume or the milk that was delivered And really this voluntary kind of hungerness really extended into the next day.

So at the next milk replacer feeding the following morning, more of those calves refused their morning milk, which really was a sharp contrast to the ones that were fed with

a colostrum replacement bottle

So really this kind of suppression of appetite was explained by stomach fill and delayed gastric emptying. So really providing larger volumes of colostrum eight hours after the initial colostrum feeding really overwhelmed the stomach capacity, prevented the stomach from emptying. So maybe having a smaller meal the second time really ensures that the calves are gonna have a robust appetite the next morning.

So it maybe says that we were maybe overfeeding a little much on some of these calves, and that the second feeding we should maybe not feed them so much, uh, as well So they had activity accelerometers on these calves, uh, on the hind legs to see what would happen. So they looked at standing and step counts.

Basically, they found that the bottle-fed calves stood longer and had more steps during feeding compared to the other calves

So basically active sucking at the nipple bottle really increased physical activity, it increased physical interaction with humans, and required about three times longer to complete than tube feeding. So about 18 minutes versus five minutes, which is kind of interesting. So bottle feeding colostrum is gonna take quite a bit longer, and we probably all know that

But the sensors on calves really confirm the physical activity that we see, um, in, in these calves. But there were really, you know, after three hours, no-- or sorry, after three days, there were really no differences in lying behavior, things like that. So in conclusion, what, what do we got? Where-- what's the take home message from all of this?

It really provides some practical insights for farmers and calf specialists and veterinarians as far as colostrum feeding in calves. So really the f-first feeding, so farms that are achieving early feeding, so within one hour of birth of high quality colostrum, had better

serum IgGs in the calves and higher IgGs that were fed to these calves. So a second colostrum feeding eight hours later really didn't provide a boost in IgG like maybe we had thought. So-- But the benefit really is trying to get that early feeding into those calves within one hour of birth

However, extended colostrum or transition milk feeding may still play a role in herd health. So that's one of the things that we might think about is that yes, a lot of us think that, oh, after 24 hours, the immunity is wrecked, and we need to get every colostrum as fast as we can. But I think there is some evidence that shows that this transition milk feeding or, uh, increased colostrum feeding may play a role in herd health.

We just have to remember that we maybe shouldn't feed as much as what we did the first time because the calves might not really be hungry. And this study also found that tubing is safe and a large secondary bottle really suppressed the appetite. So tube feeding a second meal eight hours after the first feeding is really safe when you control for volume.

So remember, don't feed so much, two, three liters versus four or five, and you have an eight-hour gap.

But really offering a large second bottle results in higher refusal rates and delayed stomach emptying, which led to more calves that were not very hungry. So that's kind of the takeaway, and one thing you should think about is labor requirements, colostrum investments in a routine second feeding, and really is it worth it?

And maybe refocus your efforts on trying to find that perfect timing and quality of the very first colostrum meal, and I think that's gonna help in the future. So first feeding high quality is probably the key. So hopefully you learned a little bit today about colostrum feeding and second bottle feeding from the study at Minnesota.

And if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at The Moose Room. That's T-H-E M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @umn.edu, or find us on the web at University of Minnesota Livestock Extension, or University of Minnesota West Central Research and Outreach Center. And with that, hope you have a good week.

Bye.