How a Michigan farm achieves calf health and labor efficiency with BOVILIS® NASALGEN® 3-PMH and SenseHub® Dairy Youngstock monitoring

Calf care is a top priority for Aubrey VanLaan, herd manager at Walnutdale Farms in Wayland, Michigan. Monitoring calf health and keeping calves free from respiratory disease are keys to the farm’s success.

“As a dairy producer walking through my young calf area or my weaning pens and seeing groups of healthy, beautiful calves – nothing feels better than that,” VanLaan says. “That is the future of our dairy and it’s just really important.”

Walnutdale Farms is a fourth-generation dairy milking 2,000 Jerseys and 850 Jerseys on two separate but nearby operations.

“It’s our priority to grow good calves, especially in the first 60 days,” VanLaan says. “We want to ensure calves get adequate nutrients to promote good growth. That will impact them as cows when they enter our herd later.”

Good calf growth depends on avoiding calf health problems. But that’s not an easy task with the often-brutal weather in southwest Michigan, ranging from hot, humid summers to frigid, wet winters, and everything in between.

“We get some crazy temperature swings, where it can be 80 degrees one day and down to 50 the next day with a bunch of rain and wind,” VanLaan says. “Weather changes really impact calves. It’s something we’re always up against.”

Protecting calves from respiratory disease with effective intranasal vaccination

To overcome these challenges, VanLaan relies on adequate ventilation and intranasal vaccination with BOVILIS® NASALGEN® 3-PMH to protect calves against pathogens that cause pneumonia.

“The transition from milk feeding to group housing presented some challenges for us in the past. Calves were breaking with respiratory disease,” VanLaan recalls.

“We started giving BOVILIS NASALGEN 3-PMH so calves can build immunity before we move them. With this protocol, we saw a complete decrease in respiratory cases once they were moved.”

VanLaan adds: “With BOVILIS NASALGEN 3-PMH we know we’re covered with the viral and bacterial pathogens that we see through diagnostics and culturing pneumonia cases. Having one product that covers all the pathogens that we battle against, works best for us.”

VanLaan appreciates the ease of intranasal vaccination with BOVILIS NASALGEN 3-PMH, especially the blue diluent that confirms which calves have received the vaccine. “The blue color gives us peace of mind,” she says.

SenseHub® Dairy Youngstock technology

Easy identification of calves needing attention is another aspect of calf care at Walnutdale Farms. VanLaan recently installed SenseHub® Dairy Youngstock monitoring ear tags on calves housed in group pens on auto feeders. Before using this technology, calf care workers were sometimes challenged to identify potential health issues among lively calves that were continually on the move in their group pens.

SenseHub monitoring ear tags monitor calf behavior 24/7, gathering data that identifies calves exhibiting behaviors that fall outside of norms. Walnutdale Farms workers are now able to care for individual calves based on a health check list generated by SenseHub monitoring data, rather than trying to spot issues among an entire group.

“SenseHub keeps things simple. When our workers get here in the morning, they head to the office and print out a list that flags the calves to check for health,” VanLaan says.

A new list generated in the afternoon alerts workers to any changes in calf health before the end of the day.

VanLaan says that SenseHub Dairy Youngstock helps workers be more efficient with their time and ensures the right calves get the right care. “They go through the calves on the list, look at them, take temperatures and within that list, decide which ones actually need medications or maybe supportive measures. They can just leave the rest alone,” she says.

Reducing calf pen hours for labor efficiency

“I don’t want my workers spending hours upon hours in the calf pen. I want them to look at the calves in the list and get out of the pen as quickly as possible. SenseHub makes them more efficient.”

In addition, SenseHub Dairy Youngstock tags are equipped with LED lights. Blinking lights make it easy to find the calves on the health list quickly and easily.

After utilizing SenseHub Dairy technology in her lactating herd for several years, VanLaan says it was an easy decision to expand monitoring to calves. “It makes sense to bring the same efficiencies and tools for our employees to find calves as well as cows,” she says.

“The team from Merck Animal Health came out and installed all my readers and all the hardware, explained how the tags needed to be placed and showed me on the computer how to run the reports,” she recalls. “They have also done some bilingual training and are always available to answer questions or help.”

Learn more about the comprehensive calf care solutions available through Merck Animal Health.

Disclaimer:
SenseHub® Dairy is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease in animals. For the diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of diseases in animals, you should consult your veterinarian. The accuracy of the data collected and presented through this product is not intended to match that of medical devices or scientific measurement devices.