Baby Calf Bellies Need Special Attention

At birth, a calf’s rumen is underdeveloped – it relies on the abomasum for digestion, the fourth stomach of a ruminant. As the calf grows, the rumen develops, and its capacity increases. At Purina, a major focus is on making sure the rumen functions correctly and provides the calf with the best immune response.

Dr. Jill Soderstrom is the dairy young animal solutions specialist for Purina Animal Nutrition. She helps dairy operations select and coordinate prebiotics, probiotics, enzymes, and other technologies available for a healthy calf.

Soderstrom explains that creating the correct balance in that calf’s gut is like mustering troops for war. Sometimes, you don’t need all the weapons, but when calves come under stress, you do.

“I think that all calves really should be on some sort of gut health technology,” she says, whether it’s replacement heifers or crossbred calves.

Healthy microbiomes will improve digestion and prevent pathogens. It also enhances a calf’s stress response. Calves experience stress even on the best-managed farms, Soderstrom explains. Simple things like the weather can cause heat stress or cold stress. Most calves live outside, so they are encountering pathogens. Even farm management to keep calves healthy, such as dehorning, castration, or vaccination, can cause some stress, too.

“When our calves experience this stress, and we trigger the immune system, our naive immune system in that calf is really slow, and it can be energetically costly,” she explains. “If we don’t feed any of these technologies… we put our calf at risk of a more costly immune response.”

A 100-lb calf will use a quarter or a half pound of just glucose to fuel its immune system, Soderstrom puts into perspective. About a quarter of the milk fed to the calf will be pure glucose. If the immune system is using that glucose, that calf needs a lot of energy.

With prebiotics, probiotics, enzymes, and other technologies, a calf’s naive immune system can go to war against stress and pathogens more effectively, without using its body reserves or risking feed efficiency.