Pnemonia

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Fresh heifers today where bought plentiful for £1100.
son took some barreners to frome today, watched some spr calvers go through, pretty well 1/2 price of ours, and bigger, auctioneer put subject to vendors approval, after the 1st one The fresh calvers made their money though, he said he was nearly tempted, on 1 or 2, but thought better of it.
Fresh hfrs at 11, certainly back a lot, or small xbreds ?
It looks quite tempting to go to a flying herd, it's just if you go down with TB, that's the bugger, but it costs more than £1100 to rear a hfr.
 

sidjon

Member
Location
EXMOOR
son took some barreners to frome today, watched some spr calvers go through, pretty well 1/2 price of ours, and bigger, auctioneer put subject to vendors approval, after the 1st one The fresh calvers made their money though, he said he was nearly tempted, on 1 or 2, but thought better of it.
Fresh hfrs at 11, certainly back a lot, or small xbreds ?
It looks quite tempting to go to a flying herd, it's just if you go down with TB, that's the bugger, but it costs more than £1100 to rear a hfr.
Big Holsteins fresh heifers at Holsworthy could be brought for less than killing Money today, have cows peaked? Got some to look at if they have clear tb test, could be worth less than the ones you put through Exeter.
 

Jdunn55

Member
Thanks everyone, they've been in for the past 10 days under vet advice so won't turn them out now until the spring

Just given a few more that couldn't eat their cake some metacam

Regarding flying herds, I'm well aware of the advantages, especially if you cannot rear youngstock well enough, as said I want to get on top of things now and rear them properly and try to prevent things going wrong in future, as done well, the advantages of breeding your own outweigh buying in imo
I love breeding cows and genetics, building families etc and quite honestly if I had to go flying I may as well sell up as that's the bit I enjoy the most
 
son took some barreners to frome today, watched some spr calvers go through, pretty well 1/2 price of ours, and bigger, auctioneer put subject to vendors approval, after the 1st one The fresh calvers made their money though, he said he was nearly tempted, on 1 or 2, but thought better of it.
Fresh hfrs at 11, certainly back a lot, or small xbreds ?
It looks quite tempting to go to a flying herd, it's just if you go down with TB, that's the bugger, but it costs more than £1100 to rear a hfr.
Half price? 400 quid?
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Thanks, this has been the worst month so far, literally no sooner than I put the post up saying things were going well and 3verything started to fall apart with sh!t flying at me from all angles :( this is just the icing on the cake ATM

Regarding colostrum, I'm going to buy one of those things (the name has escaped me!) To measure all colostrum prior to tubing the calves and anything low will get topped up with the expensive colostrum made from cows on the himalayas or whatever it is that makes them cost £30/sachet (tbf it is good stuff)

Planning on being a lot more "on it" with my youngstock from now on, they've sort of been at the back of my mind this year what with trying to get on top of starting up and sorting out the milkers

Looking to rotavec all the cows prior to dry-off
Tag and test all calves for BVD
Treat all calves with halocure for prevention against crypto (had real problems with this (never heard of it before this year) which has affected growth rates massively)
Vaccinate against pneumonia at birth and again as needed
Vaccinate against lepto and ibr

Inside on milk, ad-lib straw and ad-lib pellets for first 90 days (weaned off milk at 60) then outside on grazed grass + 1kg of 16% cake
Then housed on first of October and fed silage and wholecrop (4:1 ratio) plus 2kg cake until March then back out and 1kg of cake until finished serving and then just grazed grass for as long as possible before haylage in the winter

Does that sound OK to everyone?
we had crypto 5 yrs back, it's a bugger, never had it before, and reckon the cheapest out, would have been to x them, cost a fortune in time and drugs, those that got over it, were hit too hard.
We were lucky, it was right at the start of calving, so could change sheds, and new calf pens, and no contact between the 2 lots, but halacur is expensive though, but cheaper than losing calves, l dread to think what could have happened with 80/90 calves, in the shed, rather than 20 or so.
Rota vac all our cows pre calving, well worth doing, might try the generic one, as rv is expensive, but not really, for what it does. BVD, and IBR cows as standard.
As block calving, we acidify, and store our colostrum, which is used to feed calves, no powder, and we get on extremely well with it, and have done for years. We were asked for colostrum, to freeze, for a herd with severe johnes problems, they dropped in, 72 x 2 litre bottles, which we duly filled, then had a bollocking, because 2 hfr calves that died, tested +ve for rota virus, well they would, if we vaccinate for it. We refused the next lot, for them. Acidify milk, is meant to kill johnes, after 3 days, we do not feed any milk, from any suspected johnes cows.
Feed looks spot on, never stint on top quality feed, you will never get feed to growth conversion rates, ever again, as you can get with young calves, it's actually very expensive not to feed them the best.
Calves need a constant routine to perform properly, suitable housing, with plenty of air movement, but no drafts. I have bought 100's of calves, ex farm, and mkt. Some of the shiteholes l have seen, on farms, where frmrs think they will thrive, is unbelievable, even specially built sheds, for calves, that cost £1,000's.
But, if you don't have time to do the calf rearing, it is cheaper to pay someone to do them, we do now, as l cannot do them, 90 calves born alive, last autumn, 3 lost, 70 this spring, 2 lost, all of those 5, had another problem, not scours. Well worth the wages, and we have customers for all our calves, at a premium to.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Half price? 400 quid?
between 4 and 6, not quite 1/2, no wonder sold subject. But l bet it wont reflect those prices, in the mkt report !
@sidjon, looks like we got the timing right, k's were telling us, to sell NOW, looks like they were right.
probably pass our TB i/r, but, we made the right call, if she fails, we would have been in a deep hole, labour wise. wouldn't mind some aut calvers, if the price was right ...................................................NO.
 
Last edited:
Thanks, this has been the worst month so far, literally no sooner than I put the post up saying things were going well and 3verything started to fall apart with sh!t flying at me from all angles :( this is just the icing on the cake ATM

Regarding colostrum, I'm going to buy one of those things (the name has escaped me!) To measure all colostrum prior to tubing the calves and anything low will get topped up with the expensive colostrum made from cows on the himalayas or whatever it is that makes them cost £30/sachet (tbf it is good stuff)

Planning on being a lot more "on it" with my youngstock from now on, they've sort of been at the back of my mind this year what with trying to get on top of starting up and sorting out the milkers

Looking to rotavec all the cows prior to dry-off
Tag and test all calves for BVD
Treat all calves with halocure for prevention against crypto (had real problems with this (never heard of it before this year) which has affected growth rates massively)
Vaccinate against pneumonia at birth and again as needed
Vaccinate against lepto and ibr

Inside on milk, ad-lib straw and ad-lib pellets for first 90 days (weaned off milk at 60) then outside on grazed grass + 1kg of 16% cake
Then housed on first of October and fed silage and wholecrop (4:1 ratio) plus 2kg cake until March then back out and 1kg of cake until finished serving and then just grazed grass for as long as possible before haylage in the winter

Does that sound OK to everyone?

£££££

It's important to learn from mistakes but it's equalling important not to over react to every fek up. I do absolutely none of those things, rotavec, halocure, pnumonia vaccine, bvd tag and test, housing for 9 out of their first 12 months....

I'm not saying what I do is right but we have pretty good mortality figures and everything makes bulling weight. Mine are out from a couple of weeks old until 22 months and I haven't treated anything for pneumonia for years.
 

Surface Tension

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Scotland
Vaccinate against pneumonia at birth and again as needed
Vaccinate against lepto and ibr


Does that sound OK to everyone?
Which pneumonia viruses are you vaccinating for? We had many years of problems with losing young calves before we put proper protocols in place to vaccinate newborn calves for viruses that were causing the losses.

We now vaccinate first against Pi3 and RSV at around 9 days old then IBR at around 40 days old, plenty of colostrum at birth of course and now, not only do we not lose calves but we hardly ever have to treat then either.
 

Jdunn55

Member
Which pneumonia viruses are you vaccinating for? We had many years of problems with losing young calves before we put proper protocols in place to vaccinate newborn calves for viruses that were causing the losses.

We now vaccinate first against Pi3 and RSV at around 9 days old then IBR at around 40 days old, plenty of colostrum at birth of course and now, not only do we not lose calves but we hardly ever have to treat then either.
None ATM, hut going to do a test and find out which one has caused the problem, I'm hoping it's the cheap one, but expecting it to be the expensive ones if not several of them as is my luck 🙃
 

Jdunn55

Member
£££££

It's important to learn from mistakes but it's equalling important not to over react to every fek up. I do absolutely none of those things, rotavec, halocure, pnumonia vaccine, bvd tag and test, housing for 9 out of their first 12 months....

I'm not saying what I do is right but we have pretty good mortality figures and everything makes bulling weight. Mine are out from a couple of weeks old until 22 months and I haven't treated anything for pneumonia for years.
I really admire your heifer rearing, but I'm not sure mine would survive, the first cold spell we had has now caused me to lose 2 5 months old calves who have been outside for 3 months! I just can't understand how they have firstly caught the pneumonia and why I seem to be the only idiot who manages to have 5 month old calves die from it when they were outside!

Have I just been unlucky with this group?
 

sidjon

Member
Location
EXMOOR
between 4 and 6, not quite 1/2, no wonder sold subject. But l bet it wont reflect those prices, in the mkt report !
@sidjon, looks like we got the timing right, k's were telling us, to sell NOW, looks like they were right.
probably pass our TB i/r, but, we made the right call, if she fails, we would have been in a deep hole, labour wise. wouldn't mind some aut calvers, if the price was right ...................................................NO.
Stuff in Frome didn't look as good animals as what was in Holsworthy , hopefully we'll get them cheaper to make the average price we purchased cows for look a bit better.
 
I really admire your heifer rearing, but I'm not sure mine would survive, the first cold spell we had has now caused me to lose 2 5 months old calves who have been outside for 3 months! I just can't understand how they have firstly caught the pneumonia and why I seem to be the only idiot who manages to have 5 month old calves die from it when they were outside!

Have I just been unlucky with this group?
I think you've probably just been unlucky and somehow picked up a nasty viral pneumonia bug.

6/7 years ago I had a dozen cows suddenly abort and the pms came back as salmonella. That year no salmonella vaccine was available due to a batch failure so I did nothing and I've yet to see another case. I may well someday but who knows?

If the vaccine had been available I may well have used it at a cost of £15k in the first year £7.5k each year after that and I would now be singing it's praises saying what a wonderful job it had done in my herd.
 

Sheepykid

Member
None ATM, hut going to do a test and find out which one has caused the problem, I'm hoping it's the cheap one, but expecting it to be the expensive ones if not several of them as is my luck 🙃
Did they go down quickly with it? Or was it a case of treating them but then they never recovered? Quite often if it’s a quick process ie dead in less than 48 hours. It’s probably RSV/IBR. Which technically treatment with antibiotics will only really stop secondary infection hence why you see little improvement in the cattle. That in my experience can happen at the ages you say and out in a field. Admittedly you’ve been very unlucky being a closed herd. I see all these problems as we buy from hundreds of farms. Vaccination is a must for us. But you’d need to weigh up the cost of the vaccine as to how many you’ve lost. As has been mentioned above it soon racks up to lots of money. I think you use the same vets as me. So they’ll have some good advice. Don’t be to hard on yourself, it happens to all of us, just very few admit it.
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
£££££

It's important to learn from mistakes but it's equalling important not to over react to every fek up. I do absolutely none of those things, rotavec, halocure, pnumonia vaccine, bvd tag and test, housing for 9 out of their first 12 months....

I'm not saying what I do is right but we have pretty good mortality figures and everything makes bulling weight. Mine are out from a couple of weeks old until 22 months and I haven't treated anything for pneumonia for years.
Those frail little jerseys that nobody can keep alive...........
 

Optimus

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North of Perth
Find out which strain it is.we had issues every year in our autumn born calves.lost 7 3-5 month old calves 2 years ago.dead within a day .turns out It was mycoplasma. vaccinated for it last year along with all the other vaccines. So far so good
 

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