Strict vaccination protocol helps improve performance for calf club members

Belonging to the Bruce Peninsula Calf Producers has been a plus for George and Cheryl McCall’s Owen Sound beef farm. So has their practice of wrapping most of their own silage

by KATE PROCTER

Belonging to one of the province’s calf clubs has helped boost the bottom line of George and Cheryl McCall’s beef farm.

The McCalls raise calves from 270 cows north of Owen Sound and have been members of the Bruce Peninsula Calf Producers since its inception. The club held its fifth annual sale at the Keady Livestock Market in October. Belonging to the club makes it easier for producers to put together uniform groups of 35 to 45 calves that feedlot operators find desirable, says McCall.

The wet weather this fall will challenge the club’s vaccination protocol and McCall is interested to see how his calves fare in their new homes. He tries to keep in contact with the buyers to make sure that they aren’t having any problems with the calves. “They paid a premium because of our protocol and I don’t want to see it go bad on them,” he says.

The club has a strict vaccination protocol, and the use of implants is not permitted. McCall has figured out that not using implants costs him about 25 pounds per calf, but buyers want to implant calves themselves in order to gain the entire advantage in growth that implants give.
Dr. Peter Kotzeff is both consulting veterinarian for the calf club and also McCall’s herd vet. Kotzeff explains that the club uses the comprehensive Pfizer Gold protocol, which has worked very well. The current protocol involves vaccinating calves within a month of birth to ward off a number of diseases.

The protocol that the club uses has evolved significantly in the five years since its inception, explains Kotzeff. The focus has changed to look at an entire herd and improve the overall health. It helps produce more beef as well as improving the health of the calves after they are sold.

Kotzeff has kept detailed records for the club of how the calves that they sell perform in the feedlots. He says that the industry average for death loss is two to three per cent in the feedlot, whereas calves that have come through the program have less than one per cent death loss. Since the club’s beginning, they have never had more than 0.8 per cent chronic illness in their calves.

“This is not just a pre-vaccinated sale,” says Kotzeff. Two years ago, the club also offered buyers a guarantee that the calves would have not have horns and would be properly castrated. Buyers received $10 per head back for calves that were not properly dehorned and $50 per head for stags. This year, the club is also providing a 100 per cent age verification of all calves sold under its name.

Sticking to the basics also helps the McCalls make money from their beef herd. They pay close attention to their pastures and use intensive rotational grazing system with a variety of forages included in the mix. George explains that they used to move the cattle every day, but they realized that it was taking too much time and so cut back to moving them every five days.

Kotzeff points to the McCalls’ rotational grazing system as being one of the reasons the McCall calves perform so well. Properly managed forages remain in a stage that is most palatable and nutritionally beneficial for the cattle.

About five years ago, the McCalls purchased a $30,000 silage wrapper and now wrap about two thirds of their 4,500 round bale hay crop. They have about 1,500 acres of hay and pasture, so it was always a big challenge to get the hay harvested in good condition. Using a wrapper widens the hay harvesting window. McCall says that without the wrapper, he probably would have been forced out of the beef business altogether because it was just too difficult to get enough good quality feed harvested to take his cows through the winter. The McCalls also custom wrap bales for other farmers.

McCall says his cows perform better on the wrapped feed, especially his fall-calvers. Feeding fall-calving cows is a reproductive challenge because it was tough to give them enough energy to maintain body condition, nurse a calf and get pregnant again through the cold winter months. Since switching to wrapped hay, his rebreeding problems have virtually disappeared.

“Silage bags have revolutionized the way we feed cattle,” says Kotzeff. In the past, backgrounders and stockers would gain two and a half pounds per day on pasture, and then lose condition when eating feed from a pit silo. There was a tremendous difference between feed in the field and feed stored in the pit silo. Wrapped silage is totally different, stresses Kotzeff. The cattle prefer the feed and often perform as well on bagged silage as they did on pasture.

About 55 of McCall’s cows calve in the fall. While it costs more to raise a fall-born calf, he says he gets a premium for these calves in the spring. These calves are “ideal for backgrounders,” who want to put calves on grass for the summer.

McCall stresses that fall calving is not just a way to calve cows that have not conceived on time to produce a calf in the spring. In his experience, cows that have reproductive problems tend to continue to have difficulty, even if they are given extra time to be bred. BF