CRYPTOSPORIDA, ECOLI, ROTA VIRUS, CORONA VIRUS.
Fantastic news this month, for the first time we now have a vaccine against CRYPTOSPORIDIUM PARVUM, a scourge of every third suckler and dairy farm in Ireland. The vaccine Bovilis Cryptium consists of 2 shots of 2 ml under the skin 4 weeks apart in year one in the three month to 3 week period before calving, and each year after only one shot is required in the same period pre- calving.
“Rota corona”, “Bovigen” ,”Fencovis” (rota, corona, ecoli) vaccines can be given at the time of first or second injection. For example for February calving cows give shot 1 of Cryptium in the first week of December and booster and scour vaccine in the early days of January, in subsequent years one shot of both scour vaccines in early January.
NOTE – ENSURE ADEQUATE COLOSTRUM INTAKE IN CALVES IN THE FIRST HOUR AND COLOSTRUM / TRANSITION MILK NEEDS TO BE FED FOR 5 DAYS! IF you don’t feed adequate timely colostrum to calves, don’t waste your money on these vaccines!!! Suckler calves especially need 2 to 3 litres ASAP after birth and once sucking well will get daily immunity from the cow. A much easier task than risking your life giving a calf Halocur for 7 days, you might agree L. For dairy calves it has been shown that colostrum and transition milk feeding for the first 14 days greatly reduces diarrhoea and can improve average daily live weight gain of between 160g and 270gs a day in month one of life.
Bacterial and viral scour vaccines are well proven life savers, and are all given as one shot intramuscular shot in the 3 month to 3 week window before calving.
Reduce calf mortality, infectious scours, your work load, veterinary expenses and give your calves the best start in life with protected colostrums.
As always, if you have never experienced a bad scour outbreak in the first 14 days of a calves’ life contact your Vet for advice immediately if initial treatment i.e. electrolytes etc do not work. He or she can sample scour samples from untreated calves and diagnose the cause within 10 minutes and devise a plan to treat/prevent infectious calf diarrhoea. “Locatim” is a magic 60 ml bottle of antibodies from cows super-immunised against bacterial and viral calf scour. It can be used in the face of an outbreak , if the vaccines haven’t been given in time, or at all, and for heifers calves (as heifers’ colostrum only has 50% of the antibodies of a cow). Our go to product to prevent scour when the proverbial shit hits the fan!
As always contact us for advice on correct product choice, vaccination strategy and colostrums management.
Paul Cummins MVB Veterinary Surgeon.