Latest News From Maureen Hanson

Real-time monitoring of the environmental conditions for baby calves during transport would be highly beneficial to their comfort and health. Now, that task is becoming a possibility.

Beginning June 11, 2023, most livestock antibiotics will no longer be available over-the-counter. Ohio State University dairy veterinarian Kevin Jacque shares his thoughts on adapting to the new rules.

Acidification of milk or milk replacer is a common practice for some calf raisers, with some studies showing it improves weight gain and fecal scores in calves.

Supplementing early lactation dairy cow diets with bile acids could provide a pathway to suppressing fatty liver and ketosis, and ultimately boosting milk production and profitability.

Penn State University offers a new app that can help with decision-making.

Detecting respiratory disease in calves early – when treatment is most effective – should start by examining the head and facial features, according to veterinarian Tiago Tomazi with Merck Animal Health.

Feed additives can be included in dairy cattle diets for a variety of reasons. However, feed additives should not be considered a cornerstone to any farm feeding program.

The label change accommodates a change in packaging for the injectable cattle drug, which was designed to prevent accidental injection by human handlers, and promote human safety.

Could probiotics improve early calf growth? Researchers think so.

Just because we have easy access to the thousands of beef-on-dairy cross calves eventually headed for feedyards doesn't mean we should be vaccinating them every week, according to Dan Thomson.

Could reproductive hormones have an impact on the gut microbiota of cattle.

When baby calves are transported from their home dairy to a separate rearing site, they need support in multiple ways.

It has been well-documented that feeding preweaned calves on a higher plane of nutrition improves calf health and performance. However, providing calves more nutrients may also promote wound healing.

That jolt from your morning java also could be a handy helper in stimulating struggling newborn calves. Caffeine could help calves before they receive colostrum, or at other times when calves appear dull and lethargic.

Move over, artificial insemination. There’s a new “A.I.” in town, and it’s more intelligent than you.

Sometimes called “sudden death syndrome” or “bloody gut,” Hemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome is characterized by dark, tarry, and sometimes bright red, bloody feces; dehydration; and decreased feed intake.

The transition period, 3 weeks before and after calving, is challenging for all cows. But for first-calf heifers, it’s likely the scariest and most stressful time in their young lives.

When it comes to the products of rumen fermentation, butyrate is a beneficial amino acid superstar.

In our quest for healthy, growthy, efficiently raised calves, have we lost some of the more fundamental elements of what makes calves tick?

University of Wisconsin animal welfare researcher Sarah Adcock addresses several considerations when using caustic paste to complete disbudding, as well as some drawbacks that could be improved upon.

Because newborn calves have very little body fat to help them stay warm, calf jackets can help them preserve energy, protect immunity and improve daily gain.

Compared to Holsteins, is calving time with crossbreds more difficult in terms of calf weight, stillbirth, gestation length, or dystocia?

Effectively treating calves for scours could be as easy as feeding them something that virtually every dairy farm has on hand: colostrum.

Researchers at Virginia Tech University have investigated what effects infusing extra acetate or propionate, or lowering the pH, would have on thermodynamics of VFA in the rumen.

Monitoring calves’ body temperature is a critical metric to maintaining their health, and is especially valuable if temperature changes can be detected early.

What was once a relatively invasive and tedious procedure has become a potentially standard method of monitoring the health and nutritional status of dairy cows.

Neospora is the most commonly diagnosed cause of abortions in cattle both domestically and worldwide.

Feeding waste milk to calves captures high-quality nutrients and adds value to a product that otherwise would be discarded. But recent research sheds light on concerns about the practice.

Dr. Shaw Perrin, DVM and assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, offers recommendations on how to best assist down cows, along with some practices to avoid.

The VarcorTM system from Washington state-based Sedron Technologies  converts dairy manure into high-value components in a continuous closed loop, all without tractors, manure spreaders, or waste lagoons.

When forced to make a choice, cows will pick resting over eating.

Veterinarians and their staffs have a higher suicide rate than the general population. “Not One More Vet” is an organization dedicated to reversing that disturbing statistic.

Trace minerals are important to calves’ development, but these nutritional components can vary in source. It turns out some trace minerals are more palatable than others, resulting in differences in consumption.

Extra water – along with a possible electrolyte boost -- is never more important than in the heat of summer.

While many alternatives to palpation have evolved over the years, a quick, convenient, on-farm pregnancy test kit has remained elusive...until now.

A recent study at a northern Colorado dairy showed whether cows had to wait a long time to be milked or a little did not have much impact on their subsequent activity and resting behavior.

We now know the beneficial influence of feeding transition milk to calves. Is there a way to deliver that nutritional and immunological support and bypass the tedious process of harvesting and feeding transition milk?

Are your producers getting heifers bred earlier than is beneficial? DVM Gavin Staley thinks that's the case too often. He offers three practices to focus on for hitting the “sweet spot” in heifer-breeding maturity.

Its name sounds like something that belongs in the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. But festulolium actually is a highly useful hybrid forage grass – the result of a cross between fescue grass and ryegrass.

The sooner calves eat enough dry feed to sustain themselves, the better equipped they are to bridge the nutritional gap between the fixed liquid ration and a weaned diet of solely dry feeds.

A new insurance concept is being launched to allow dairy producers around the world to financially insure against the production losses caused by heat stress.

Maternal colostrum is often considered nature’s “perfect food.” But does this “free” resource help calves achieve passive immunity as reliably as the guaranteed ingredients in a bag of colostrum replacer?

The new Calf Care & Quality Assurance program is ready to engage some arms and legs to carry out its mission. The second CCQA Instructor training is planned for June 2022.

Young animals often benefit from stemmy, lower quality forages. WIth regard to nutrition, this may seem counterintuitive but research indicates that's the case.

A high incidence of sole ulcers in a dairy herd is probably not the fault of the ration.

It’s important to stay abreast of new research that can influence dairy management practices. That’s what happened recently at Rosy-Lane Holsteins, Watertown, Wis.

In the quest to find alternatives to antibiotics to fight disease in dairy calves, essential oils are the subject of a growing body of calf health research.

Access to livestock drugs through over-the-counter (OTC) channels was curbed considerably starting in 2017. Soon, OTC antibiotics may no longer be available through traditional channels at all.

This first-of-its-kind decision by FDA opens the door for progress on other genome editing efforts.

A researcher explores the intricacies of fecal pH and explains how changes in the metric can be an early signal of digestive and health disruptions in dairy cows.