Pressure from consumer groups challenges all levels of food animal care. It also makes our industry consider other ways to approach “what we already know.” Our team liked this article as it challenges the nomenclature for shipping fever and introduces a possible solution that more closely fits natural herd behaviors.
“There is no event we impose on cattle more stressful than weaning.” says Joe Stookey. At least that’s true with traditional, abrupt weaning, where calves are separated from their dams and often loaded straight onto a truck headed for a new location. Which means that’s true of most calves.
Source: Beef, September 15, 2016.
‘What’s so unnatural about abrupt weaning is that the mother and the milk both disappear simultaneously,’ Stookey explains. ‘In a natural environment, in a matriarchal society, the calves are programmed to expect that the milk will be shut off at some point — but they’re not expecting the cows to disappear, too, because they’re expecting to join the herd.’
INSIGHTS: We spend considerable effort on weaning and pre-conditioning programs. These programs fall into the category of prevention. Add this article and the recent post “Calf weaning methods compared” to your arsenal of discussion topics when meeting with cow-calf producers.