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Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
00;00;11;03 - 00;00;37;11
Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room. It has been a crazy week here in western Minnesota at our research center. I've been doing a lot of the chores this week. Milking, feeding. Our workers at the University of Minnesota at our dairy farm went on strike. So few of us, others have been doing the work, while they have been out.
00;00;37;13 - 00;01;08;15
Brad
And it's been a lot of work, I'll tell you that, one day, I think, milked, moved cows. I fed all the cows. And then we were pulling calves at 9 p.m. at night. Not that I'm complaining. I actually enjoyed doing all of that. And getting back into the work. But, yeah, we move on, and and, hopefully things will be resolved soon, so all of our workers can come back, but we've started calving here as well.
00;01;08;17 - 00;01;32;25
Brad
Like I mentioned the other night, we were pulling some calves. And so we have started calving here at our research center with different breeds. You know, we're using Angus and some and tall on some of our dairy animals and we're getting dairy calves as well. So we're kind of back into the swing of things of calving and feeding calves and how to sort of manage all of this.
00;01;32;25 - 00;01;56;01
Brad
Well, there was a recent article that just came out a couple days ago that talked about weaning, about trying to improve the welfare of ruminant animals around weaning. So it really talked about transitioning from milk to a solid diet. So this article, it came out authored by Heather nave. She was at Purdue University, kind of in a veterinary journal.
00;01;56;04 - 00;02;24;04
Brad
I wanted to kind of walk through some of the things that they had talked about in their studies and what they summarized as far as weaning and some of the recommendations that they give based on how we can wean dairy calves as well as beef calves into the future, and kind of give some practical guidance for veterinarians, for farmers on weaning.
00;02;24;06 - 00;02;53;00
Brad
So obviously, the transition from milk to a solid diet is very stressful. It's stressful. And a lot of different ruminants, from calves, goats to lambs, it impacts their welfare. It impacts their growth and might impact their long term productivity, because there's a lot of stress that happens around these times with nutritional, physiological, behavioral and environmental changes in all of these animals.
00;02;53;05 - 00;03;21;27
Brad
So this review talked about dairy and beef. It also mentions lambs and goat kids. We'll talk a little bit about that. Not a lot, but just some kind of interesting facts that they presented about those species. But really weaning is important. So there's kind of two key factors that will probably talk the most about. And that's weaning age and earlier versus later weaning and milk removal method.
00;03;21;27 - 00;03;58;25
Brad
So talking about abrupt weaning versus gradual weaning. So obviously most commercial production systems often prioritize efficiency. And we try to balance that with environmental health, welfare and long term performance. And this is very crucial. So we're going to talk about evidence on weaning practices and will highlight some of the benefits of later. And gradual weaning, and outlined some practical management strategies to mitigate stress at weaning time.
00;03;58;28 - 00;04;20;22
Brad
So again this is all based off of of this review that was recently published actually just a couple days ago. And I'll, I'll link it in the show notes. So if you want to go read the scientific article, you certainly can. So what about weaning age. So it kind of gives some ideas and is one of the key welfare concerns is weaning age.
00;04;20;22 - 00;04;57;03
Brad
Obviously it varies significantly across different species across production systems. Obviously dairy and beef for very different because we're driven by different production goals and locations. And dairy calves and lambs are often weaned earlier due to economic pressures to sell product and reduce feeding costs. Obviously, we feed calves milk. If you're feeding whole milk from your farm, you're trying to get that milk into the bulk tank much faster and not be using it to feed calves.
00;04;57;03 - 00;05;35;06
Brad
While beef calves and lambs in extensive pasture systems, they remain on their dams longer due to lower feed costs, labor costs and infrastructure costs. So this review states that most dairy calves are weaned from six weeks to eight weeks. Typically they found 10 to 11 weeks. That is what is typically happening in the dairy world right now, which is interesting because I remember back in the day, a long time ago when I was an undergraduate student, we were weaning calves at 28 days in a university herd, and I'm at like 12 weeks now.
00;05;35;09 - 00;06;03;17
Brad
I choose to wean longer. I think there's a lot of benefits to that. And so we are seeing weaning ages actually increase in a lot of our dairy animals. Sometimes in New Zealand, animals are being weaned by weight, and usually that's kind of 150 to 200 pounds, depending on whether they're Holsteins or jerseys or the crossbred. So not in in every country it's it's kind of different.
00;06;03;19 - 00;06;36;26
Brad
So weaning by age, we haven't really caught on with that kind of here in the US we want to as big as possible. But that might be a consideration into the future as well. In beef calves, conventional weaning is typically around 180 to 220 days earlier, weaning less than 100 days earlier. Weaning less than 180 days is not as popular, but usually around 200 days on average is the weaning date, so six months, six and a half months.
00;06;36;28 - 00;07;07;04
Brad
The beef calves are on mum. Here's a couple interesting facts in in lambs, early weaning is 30 to 60 days. Traditionally it's 60 to 90 days. In some practice late weaning. And that's usually ones that are dam reared. Usually artificially reared lambs are often weaned at 5 to 6 weeks to minimize cost and maximize milk sales. They also present goats median age in goats 8 to 14 weeks.
00;07;07;07 - 00;07;50;13
Brad
Some wean as early as 6 to 8 weeks, but kind of the average is somewhere in that 8 to 14 weeks. But obviously these differences reflect a lot of distinct production goals and many different management characteristics. So if you think about weaning, what are the long term consequences of poorly managed weaning on animal health and performance? So if we really do a bad job at weaning, and I'll admit we've done a bad job, but even in some of our research studies and some things here at our university, sometimes weaning doesn't go as planned and it can be certainly have negative consequences on animal health.
00;07;50;13 - 00;08;29;10
Brad
And performance. Obviously, we can have a compromised immune system, so early and abrupt weaning can increase stress responses, which may suppress the immune system and elevate risk of disease. We can actually disrupt the gut development if we have inadequate weaning practices, especially early or abrupt weaning. This can lead to less stable and resilient gut microbiomes, impaired rumen development, and alterations in microbiome and gene expression in the gut, which can indicate intestinal stress.
00;08;29;10 - 00;08;59;03
Brad
So stress of the GI tract. Obviously, one of the biggest things that we think about is growth and reduced performance. So sometimes we see compensatory growth in weaning. But poorly managed weaning often leads to negative average daily gains. And post weaning growth decreases, which really delays the animal's ability to reach optimal weights for reproduction. And we've seen that in some of our research studies will get this weaning slump.
00;08;59;05 - 00;09;28;25
Brad
And you know, how do you work with that to try and increase the growth again after we see this weaning slump, sometimes poorly managed weaning can increase death rate in animals. So if you have longer weaning periods you can reduce post weaning morbidity. But poorly managed weaning can also increase issues like diarrhea or ruminant acidosis. So we can see a lot of different health problems at weaning.
00;09;28;25 - 00;09;51;20
Brad
And probably one of the biggest things is behavioral issues. So intense behavioral stress is a response during weaning. And it can have long term effects on behavioral beyond the immediate post weaning period. And it's not really studied as well as we see in weaning. And this is what one of the new projects that I'm going to be working with this fall.
00;09;51;20 - 00;10;21;01
Brad
And we'll talk about that, at another time period with pulled genetics and just butting and weaning. And what does the long term behavioral aspects of that. But really we try to balance short term management with long term animal health, welfare and productivity to help improve the performance after weaning. So we talk about the main stressors of young ruminants during weaning and why this period is so critical for their welfare and future productivity.
00;10;21;01 - 00;10;50;12
Brad
So we get stress from, like I said before, nutritional, behavioral, environmental changes. Key factors contributing to the stress include obviously major nutritional disruption from changing diet, so abrupt weaning, if we go right from milk in this calf, is supposed to expect to eat grain and water. That's a huge change. And in beef herds, maternal separation is a major stress for those calves.
00;10;50;12 - 00;11;38;14
Brad
So strategies during this time period milk removal method weaning age significantly impact the animal's health, function, emotional state, and ability to express their natural behaviors. So again it all goes back to management poor management. You will see decreased growth and negative lifelong productivity. So if we talk a few about a few of these things weaning age. So weaning at younger ages increases management intensity and the risk of welfare challenges so early and abrupt weaning pose welfare risks across all of these ruminant species that were in this review, because it really talks about their ability to eat solid feed and developed a gastrointestinal tract.
00;11;38;14 - 00;12;08;28
Brad
So earlier weaning might not have development as fast as what it would in later weaning. What about behavioral stress? So earlier weaning is generally associated with increased behavioral signs of hungry. So vocalization. So we know calves beller a lot at weaning. And we see that obviously stress. They're pacing they're biting. They're licking at many things whether they're in a pen or with other animals.
00;12;09;01 - 00;12;38;07
Brad
And kind of a conclusion was weaning dairy calves later. So 8 to 13 weeks of age resulted in fewer behavioral signs of hunger compared to earlier weaning calves. So six weeks. So we saw less adverse behaviors at later weaning. What about physiological stress. So earlier weaning is linked to higher metabolic stress, elevated nifa concentrations, immune suppression, less stable gut microbiome and challenges to the immune system.
00;12;38;07 - 00;13;08;10
Brad
So we can have physiological stress. Obviously growth is a big one that we all talk about. Growth outcomes definitely are improved with later weaning. We see better growth in longer weaning times. And I've seen that in our herd as well, just that animals appear to grow better based on later weaning times. When we used to wean at six weeks and now we're weaning at 12 weeks, the animals just look better, they're healthier and well, they're probably much happier.
00;13;08;13 - 00;13;37;27
Brad
So some of the benefits of later weaning overall, later weaning is associated with reduced behavioral stress, better growth rates and much better digestive development. So kind of a conclusion that they stressed is that veterinarians should really advise clients that earlier weaning may increase stress, suppress immunity, disrupt gut development and reduce growth, while later weaning generally supports better health and growth outcomes.
00;13;37;29 - 00;14;14;13
Brad
So how does weaning age and milk removal influence the welfare? So let's talk about abrupt weaning. So obviously we know abrupt weaning. And that is just cold turkey cutting them off. And we do that a lot in our research herd. And it's a debate among me and my colleagues whether we should actually do that or not. Do we gradually wean them and is our things better just by cutting them off, or are we better off to gradually wean them?
00;14;14;15 - 00;14;47;23
Brad
Obviously, abrupt weaning is very common in beef production systems because of practicality, and it's the predominant weaning method in North American beef production systems. But obviously we see a lot of physiological responses in weaning. Sometimes they're generally mild and maybe short term gradual weaning. Obviously we're reducing milk volume or frequency. It's more common. It's more common in automated feeders in dairy calves.
00;14;47;25 - 00;15;17;22
Brad
So methods include reducing volume, diluting the milk. You can restrict suckling, use nose flaps or fence line contact. But really abrupt weaning typically induces increased stress responses and different behavioral stresses. So vocalizations reduce rest and feeding time. Senior pacing all over the place. Like I said, looking all over. You know, you can tell when these animals are stressed.
00;15;17;26 - 00;15;49;10
Brad
No doubt about it. Particularly fence line separation in beef calves and moderate to high milk allowances in dairy calves can reduce or eliminate post weaning growth problems and support higher average daily gains. So we see that. So gradual weaning tends to be much better for the behavioral responses in these animals overall. Across dairy and beef animals, abrupt weaning typically increases behavioral signs of stress.
00;15;49;12 - 00;16;19;06
Brad
And we have to try to figure out how to alleviate those signs of stress. So here's the strategies for successful weaning. So you want to have nutritional management. So we want to promote rumen development. So if we have early access to highly palatable solid feed. So either create feeding or free choice starter and forage. It stimulates the rumen development and prepares the animal for a solid diet.
00;16;19;06 - 00;16;49;01
Brad
So early access to that it drives rumen papilla development helps increase butyrate in the rumen for increased growth. We start feeding in calf starter here about two weeks of age for our dairy calves. So they're on solid feed. We like to have them eating 5 pounds of grain per animal per day by the time they are weaned, and we probably have less weaning stress once they're doing that.
00;16;49;02 - 00;17;12;10
Brad
Obviously we want to have consistent solid feed, so we want to maintain the same palatable feed post weaning as what they were getting before they got weaned, and any changes in this feed should occur at least ten days before we wean. So if you're wanting to change feed, you should do it before weaning and give them adequate time.
00;17;12;10 - 00;17;36;01
Brad
And like I said before, we want to ensure that they are consuming sufficient solid feed. So one and a half to 2% of their body weight for calves for several days before we take away the milk. And that will probably help us in any setbacks that we we see. One thing that we really don't think a lot about is water access.
00;17;36;03 - 00;18;04;03
Brad
So free access to water from birth is critical for feed intake. It's probably the most underappreciated but vital factor during weaning. Most ruminants need several gallons or liters of water if they're eating dry feed, so they need water more than just a two quarts or a little bucket of water during the day, you have to make sure that they're getting adequate water intake.
00;18;04;05 - 00;18;36;21
Brad
And during weaning, as milk intake decreases and solid feed increases, the demand for water increased as well. So limiting water access can severely reduce rumen fermentation and overall growth. Obviously, it leads to other things dehydration, poor digestion, and reduced productivity. So stunted growth, poor feed intake. So really water. And we don't talk a lot about water, but I believe in free access to water from birth.
00;18;36;21 - 00;18;57;17
Brad
We have in our herd group fed pens. We have some Richie Waters heated waters in the winter time, or these calves have access to water at all times, whether they want to drink it, that's up to them. But at least we provide free choice access to that and this group discusses some other nutritional supplements that could be used.
00;18;57;17 - 00;19;27;19
Brad
You know, probiotics, prebiotics, plant extracts, they may reduce weaning stress. To support gut health and rumen fermentation. So what about environmental strategies during weaning that can help. So these are kind of social and environmental things. So social housing can increase solid feed intake and weight gain. So there's calves are familiar with their different social groups. Obviously environmental enrichment comes into that.
00;19;27;19 - 00;20;00;19
Brad
So some people use brushes balls or rubber teats in their pens that can reduce non-nutritive oral behaviors and can increase positive behaviors in these animals with grooming positive human contact. So regular and positive contact with people can reduce stress in these young ruminants. So just weaning them and walking away and not caring about these animals, I think if they were to see humans more often, I think we might do a better job in reducing weaning stress.
00;20;00;19 - 00;20;38;18
Brad
And obviously, one of the big things that we need to do is avoiding stacking certain stressors. So don't have more than one stress at a time. So weaning should be timed separately from other stressful events like transportation, group changes, vaccinations, d horning or dis boarding. So you want to align weaning with your different management goals, but avoid doing it at a time that you're doing some of these other things, and that just increases the stress for these animals and can make it a much more difficult time.
00;20;38;18 - 00;21;06;26
Brad
So what are the key recommendations that we would have for either veterinarians or farmers trying to provide advice on weaning practices, or trying to figure out weaning to improve animal welfare and productivity? Well, obviously you want to assess readiness. So assess weaning readiness by confirming the solid feed intake or dry matter intake, rumen development and overall health before initiating milk removal.
00;21;06;28 - 00;21;34;20
Brad
So ruminants, dairy calves, beef calves should be consuming one and a half to 2% of body weight in solid feed for several days before we wean in dairy systems, we might encourage gradual weaning methods. So milk reduction or dilution, especially with high milk allowance. So if you're feeding a lot of milk ten plus liters or ad libitum, obviously reducing that milk is important and really promotes social housing.
00;21;34;23 - 00;22;05;10
Brad
The group housing pair housing to support behavioral and growth development. So in beef systems, we could advocate for separating abrupt milk weaning from other stressors like dam separation and transport. So we might suggest two step approaches like fenceline weaning or nose flaps to reduce these stress behaviors and improve post weaning weight gain, particularly if we're delaying transport. So I know transport is a big thing.
00;22;05;13 - 00;22;33;20
Brad
And even in the dairy world as well, weaning and transport can be quite complicated. Promote gradual weaning. So we would recommend gradual milk removal. So reducing the volume of milk and it can ease the transition, support rumen development and reduce post weaning growth setbacks. We can encourage later weaning so we can explain that later weaning generally leads to better behavioral and growth outcomes and improved physiological resilience.
00;22;33;20 - 00;23;01;05
Brad
Obviously supporting rumen development so early and consistent access to power to both solid feed and ample water. Remember, water from birth is important for rumen development. Social housing group housing can help aid in behavioral adaptation. I think we see that maybe a little bit more in our group housing. We don't see as much weaning stresses when we're in group housing.
00;23;01;07 - 00;23;33;15
Brad
And again, don't stack stressors by separating or weaning animals and then transporting or vaccinating them at the same time, that just causes undue stress. And you'll probably see some post weaning slump. But obviously we want to monitor them closely for any signs of inadequate adaptation. So reduce feed intake, diarrhea scours, bloating, acidosis. And obviously we want to go check on them.
00;23;33;15 - 00;24;00;12
Brad
We want to see human contact with those animals. I think if they see a human, they're they're more apt to have a much better outcome. So obviously there's a lot of things to consider. Long term costs are another one. And, you know, obviously early an abrupt weaning might offer short term economic savings. But this certainly can lead to grow setbacks and long term performance costs that may outweigh these initial benefits.
00;24;00;12 - 00;24;37;14
Brad
So there's a lot of things that we can work with obviously veterinarians extension, a lot of different industry leaders are crucial in advising producers on weaning approaches that balance economic goals with animal welfare and long term productivity, and this can really help implement monitoring protocols, anticipate health challenges and develop preventative strategies. Obviously, we must explore some additional knowledge gaps on farms to figure out what's the best way to work with these weaning animals.
00;24;37;16 - 00;25;11;06
Brad
But I think there's a lot of principles that go along with weaning. Kind of a practical conclusion here for dairy systems. I probably wouldn't recommend fully weaning until sufficient solid feed intake ensures rumen maturity, but I would encourage gradual weaning methods and social and environmental enrichment for beef systems. We could advocate for abrupt milk removal to be time separately from other stressors like maternal separation and transport.
00;25;11;09 - 00;25;33;22
Brad
So having a two step approach like fence line reading or nose flaps might reduce stress and improve post weaning gain. So with that, I hope you, learned a little bit about weaning kind of the status of weaning in the industry. What's happening, how to maybe reduce some of these weaning stressors that are happening in, in animals?
00;25;33;22 - 00;25;51;07
Brad
I think it's always an important factor. It's one thing that we don't think about. It's like, oh, we're just abrupt, wean them and put them in a pan and we'll just start feeding them and they'll be fine. Well, I think we need to evaluate our methods and try and figure out the best ways on farm to wean animals.
00;25;51;09 - 00;26;17;29
Brad
So with that, I think we'll leave it there today. Hopefully you learned a few things and with that, if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the Moose Room. That's mostly from at Uman Edu, or find us on the web at University of Minnesota Extension. Livestock or human Rock dairy. With that, I hope you have a great week.
00;26;18;01 - 00;26;21;19
Brad
Bye.