4 essential tips for spring calving

With spring calving underway, simple changes ahead of calving will ensure you are ready for the season. Here are 4 essential tips to help with spring calving:

1.Calving Hygiene

When calving indoors, it is easy for disease to spread. Disinfect necessary areas such as calving pens, to help prevent disease spread and bacteria.

Newborn calves are susceptible to disease in unhygienic environments. Ensure good naval hygiene at birth, applying iodine to disinfect and dry the naval preventing disease.

Disinfect your calving equipment, including calving ropes, bottles and feeding equipment, and wear gloves when assisting a calving.

2. Quality Colostrum

Colostrum is one of the most important factors at calving time. Ensuring every calf receives the optimum amount of quality colostrum goes a long way.

Calves should receive 3 litres or 10% of their body weight in good quality colostrum within the first few hours after birth. A refractometer will help you measure the quality of the cows colostrum.

If you haven’t seen a calf suckle, encouraging them to feed or supplementing them is advised.

3.Protocol and Procedure

Ensuring all team members are involved in planning and know what calving procedures to follow is essential to the success of your calving. Get the team together and discuss when to assist, colostrum protocol and health plans.

Calving can be a dangerous job for staff to undertake – make sure everyone is confident with procedures to ensure safety and successful calvings.

4.Accurate Records

After delivering a healthy calf, accurately recording the birth and registering the calf with BCMS, ScotEID, or Nifais is the most important task during the calving period. You can record this straight into the Herdwatch app avoiding duplicate paperwork. Below is a list of essential information to record, allowing you to make informed future breeding decisions from trends in performance.

Every time you record a birth in the Herdwatch App, it creates a calf registration that can be sent direct as an individual or batch record to BCMS, ScotEID or Nifais. Find out more here.

Save time and plan ahead with the Herdwatch App.