Helping cows quickly resolve reproductive tract inflammation, as well as maintaining strong blood calcium levels are two key objectives during the post calving period. But how does diet and body condition score influence this process? We caught up with ForFarmers’ Ruminant Specialist Dr Bethan Till to find out.
Inflammation of the reproductive tract is a natural response post-calving. But if it doesn’t decline quickly after three to seven days, it can negatively impact cow fertility and performance. Cows can experience:
It’s important to resolve the inflammation response quickly. This can be achieved by providing optimal nutrition but also by effectively managing Body Condition Score (BCS).
When a cow experiences tissue damage or infection it produces proteins, including plasma haptoglobin (Hb). Hb fuels inflammation and when there’s higher levels of it in a cow’s blood, there’s less albumin. Albumin is a protein that helps resolve inflammation.
Cows calving with BCS >3.5 or <2.5
BCS targets pre-calving
Sub-optimal BSC results in prolonged inflammation of the reproductive tract. Inflammation reduces calcium levels in the blood and the longer it goes on, the worse the impact on cow performance.
But to fully appreciate the negative impact this has on animal performance we need to understand the vital role that calcium plays during the post-calving period.
A cow has huge demand for calcium after calving. This calcium needs to be readily available in the blood. If blood calcium levels are too low, it will be extracted from a cow’s bones and muscles.
Cows going into the post-calving period with inadequate levels of blood calcium will experience greater likelihood of clinical and sub-clinical milk fever. They’re also more likely to suffer with other metabolic challenges in the future. This can lead to:
Implementing DCAB or Calcium Capture diets before calving ensures that there’s plenty of calcium, readily available for a cow to utilise in their blood post-calving.
This approach is about manipulating a cow’s diet that triggers a hormonal response to release calcium into the blood. This results in more calcium in the bloodstream, which can immediately be used in the post-calving period to fuel milk and colostrum production.
It’s an easy to manage process and here’s how you do it:
A full DCAB diet is more difficult to manage and aims to manipulate a cow’s diet to create low blood pH levels. This increases the responsiveness of muscle tissue to the parathyroid hormone, which is released in response to low calcium levels. By doing so, more calcium is re-absorbed from a cow’s bones, urine and intestines.
This approach isn’t suitable for flying herds and is usually used on farms operating tight calving blocks.
A partial DCAB diet can be achieved through using TRANSLAC Rolls and TRANSLAC Extra.
Here’s how it’s done:
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