Working Ranch April/May 2025

day, water is the most critical aspect and maybe the least thought about part of cattle health,” Gardner observes. “We try to learn and improve how we care for cattle,” Gardner explains. “We have an excellent veterinarian who has helped us. If you set up your cows for success, your calves will be successful, too.” The Gardners constantly strive to follow vaccine instructions, espe cially MLVs. “Focus on handling the vaccine correctly, keep it out of the sun, and keep it cool,” Gardner con cludes. “Vaccines are expensive, so try to handle them correctly.” RECIPE FOR HEALTH Karla Wilke, Ph.D., Cow-Calf Stocker Management Specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says producers can feed quality feed and minerals to cows and first-calf heifers to produce strong calves. Ranchers should also evaluate Body Condition Scores (BCS) in the third trimester. They may need to add energy, protein, vitamins and minerals, and additional feed to maintain a good BCS, ensuring the cow’s colostrum is nutritionally dense and chock full of immunoglob ulins for the calf’s first meal. “We can have a great vaccination program, but if the calf doesn’t have an immune system that can respond to the program, it doesn’t do much good,” Wilke explains. A worst-case scenario occurs when the dam is thin and does not receive good nutrition during the third tri mester. Her calf is weak, and small, needing over an hour to get up to nurse. Her colostrum has poor qual ity and volume because she didn’t receive quality feed and mineral sup plementation, so the calf does not get a good first meal. If he is in cold, wet conditions in a crowded pen, he will be sick before branding because he has a compromised immune system. However, a calf born to a cow that received good nutrition, with a BCS maintained between five and six, has a better outcome. He is healthy at birth, jumping up to nurse within an hour. She has large amounts of high-qual ity colostrum for his first meal. He is born into a clean pen and has a calf shed with clean, dry hay he can crawl into if it snows. He responded well to

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