Calving Mineral and Product Considerations for Calving Season
Posted: February 25, 2022 | Written By: Leslie Meshke, Form-A-Feed
Our favorite time of year is here, calving season! The crisp cold air, the early mornings and late nights and coming out to find a healthy calf and caring momma cow makes it all worth it! Making sure you have a healthy cow to begin with gives you a step ahead in this crucial game. Offering mineral year-round to your cows is the best way to ensure that your cow herd is getting everything they need in vitamins and minerals for the growing calf that is either beside them or inside them. Our PowerPro Mineral line as well as our Form-A-Lic tubs offer everything you need for a healthy cow all year round.
Focusing on calving time, you want to make sure you have your cows on a good mineral program and a balanced diet to get everything they need. Our late gestation calving mineral is great for this time in their gestation period as it has macro minerals and chelated trace minerals to help make them more available to the cow. Another great option, fed through the TMR, as a dry mineral is our PowerPro Bio Mineral R1400. This mineral includes our Stealth 5® product that improves immune function and blocks pathogens that cause disease. This mineral also has chelated trace minerals as well as Rumensin® to help with cocci control in your cattle herd. These minerals should be fed at least 45 – 60 days prior to calving to get the most benefit out of supplementation. Form-A-Feed currently has a PowerPro mineral promotion going on for your calving and spring mineral needs. Ask your dealer or Form-A-Feed Nutrition and Production specialist for details. If lic tubs are a good fit for your operation, our Stress Lic tub is a great option to give cattle added Stealth 5 as well as protein, chelated trace minerals, and added vitamin C for immune response during stressful periods.
Once you have a healthy calf on the ground, the next step is to keep that calf healthy, especially those first 7-14 days post-natal. Calving considerations that most often affect calf health are the types of facilities you are calving in; whether it be dirt lots or cement lots, and what the weather has been like. Do you have nice frozen ground or wet muddy conditions to calve in? With neonatal diarrhea being the leading cause of death in calves in the first month it is important to consider what you can do to try to help treat/prevent it. Along with a good vaccination program, there are other tools you can use to get through a pathogen outbreak. Form-A-Feed has a full line of products to help you both prevent an outbreak and help treat should scours become an issue. Our calf boluses are great for these types of incidences. Form-A-Feed offers Calf Renova boluses to help clean out the infected calf’s GI track as well as our Calf Sci-Mic CB to help repopulate the gut with good bacteria using a high dose of live and viable microorganisms. Having a good source of electrolytes during this period is also key to keeping the calf hydrated and on its way to recovery. Calf Restart One-4 as well as Bovine Bluelite C are both helpful products to keep in your calving toolbox.
We plan all year to lead up to calving time and getting as many healthy babies on the ground as possible and off to a great start. Being prepared and doing what we can for the cow and the calf is our number one priority. We know you care about your herd’s health and productivity. Consider the use of some of these tools during this calving season and help alleviate stressful situations that can occur. Reach out to your Form-A-Feed Nutrition and Production Specialist if you have any further questions and to save on PowerPro minerals today! Best of luck during this exciting time.