It doesn’t take long for anyone raising calves to realize how difficult and critical the first two weeks of a calf’s life can be. This period can set up an animal for success or failure for the rest of her career on the farm. While maternity care is paramount and the foundation for a successful calf program, fluid therapy is also a large component for a successful calf program.
No matter how good a calf program or maternity care is, there will always be calves that inevitably get scours. The important thing to note with scours is while bacteria and viruses CAUSE the scours, it’s dehydration from the pathogen that ultimately kills the calves in most cases. With this in mind, fluid therapy becomes crucial to aid these animals. I would argue this is the most important defense you can give the calves, even over antibiotics which typically aren’t needed if the calf has enough fluid therapy.
In my practical on-farm experience, the most effective fluid therapy is a bottle of electrolytes with the combination of an IV if the animal needs one. The risk of dying of dehydration is a ticking time bomb so if the animals is showing signs of moderate/ severe dehydration, an IV will always be superior to an electrolyte as it provides the animal immediate support. Determining if an animal needs an IV can be the tricky part and requires training and in many cases some mind shifting. I remember the first time a vet came out to the calf ranch I was managing at the time to help with a scour outbreak. We walked through the babies, and she showed me all the calves who needed an IV- which were many. I could not wrap my mind around giving that many IV’s. At that time, we were giving very few IV’s and often for calves already too far gone. This was a major mind shift for both me and the employees. Although, once we saw the benefits of IV therapy, we were all on board.
So, what does identifying these animals look like? A very clear indicator is if the animal does not drink or finish their bottle of milk (excluding new babies, 3 days of age or younger). Other signs to look for are general lethargy, sunken eyes, “sad” ears, and the skin pull test. I would often shake the front of the hutch to see how the animal reacted; if the animal responded startled and alert, I knew she was fine. If she had no response or a very slow one, I would investigate further. Diarrhea is a sign but only to be used as an indicator along with other symptoms; if the animal looks alert and healthy, loose stools can be caused from being new to the world, not necessarily disease. This can be a struggle to communicate to employees. Comparing the calves’ stools to that of a newborn human baby helps with the understanding. I found the most helpful way to check babies is not to look for sick calves, but to look for healthy ones and find outliers from there. This prevents us from over analyzing calves that may not be sick.
While we don’t want to over-treat calves, we also don’t want to wait too long to address these animals. Giving an IV to an animal that is on their death bed won’t help anyone and the sooner a sick animal receives care, the higher the success rate of getting these animals back on track. It’s a tricky balance, but an IV will never hurt a calf so if an animal is questionable, I would recommend following through with an IV.
Of course, there is always the logistics to consider when implementing this practice. At the calf ranch I managed, we had about 100 calves come in a day. If calf health was smooth, we gave about 15- 30 IV’s a day. We were probably too generous considering which animals received an IV, but we were very partial to the practice and didn’t want to risk calf health. A very experienced employee could give an IV in about 10 minutes. I’m sure a slow drip approach may be more beneficial but not practical on a calf ranch. We made our own IVs using an RO (reverse osmosis) water system and combining “NoSalt” (potassium chloride) and baking soda (sodium bicarb) together. IVs were kept in a warm water bath to give at the calf’s body temperature. A gallon was given to sick calves and a half gallon given to questionable animals. We would also give a bottle of electrolytes to these calves between milk feedings. It is also important that these animals still receive milk.
While giving IV’s to calves at a more liberal level may seem a bit bizarre to some, it is a practice that can prevent calves from becoming chronic animals that struggle through the calf program or an animal that dies. In the end, a sick calf will always take someone’s time, whether the process drags out from being sick as a baby for several days and then going on to have pneumonia from poor recovery and then potentially being held back and so on. So, the question comes down to this: Would you rather spend the 10-15 min to get this animal back on track with an IV or struggle with her to just wait and see how and if she makes out the calf program as a viable production animal? By no means will an IV save every calf, but it will offer the animal a fighting chance. Your calves are your future milking cows so giving them every opportunity will only serve the dairy in the end.