The critical first moments of a calf’s life are essential in shaping its future productivity. Poor calf health leads to both direct and indirect costs, including reduced growth rates, increased mortality, and lower future productivity, all of which significantly impact long-term profitability. Early intervention is critical for improving calf health and ensuring long-term success in your herd.
In this episode of Ruminate This we discuss why “winning the battle of the gut” from Day One is vital for calf health. Pathogens multiply three times faster than beneficial bacteria, making it essential to boost beneficial bacteria and pathogen-specific proteins to defend and protect calves.
With dairy, beef, and beef x dairy calves reaching record prices, ensuring they can protect themselves throughout the milk-feeding phase is key to unlocking their full genetic potential and setting them up for lifelong productivity and success.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
📩 Have questions or want tailored advice for your calf program? Email us at [email protected] to connect with the Agrarian Solutions team for a personalized consultation.
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And I am excited to start diving into season two and just to kind of get everybody’s mind kind of pointed in the direction of where we’re headed in 2025. There’s a few words I want everybody to keep in mind as you check out our episodes throughout the rest of the year.
And those six words are Defend and Protect for a Lifetime. Pretty powerful words and what they mean is defend and protect your livestock for a lifetime. I think it’s a very important topic that we’re going to cover and how 2025 is going to look, is we’re going to spend some time here in the first part of the year, just visiting with different experts, starting today with Dr. Larry Roth about the importance of calf health.
And as we work through the year, we’re going to be talking about calves kind of in this first few months, we’re going to work into that transition period, from milk to weanin. And how to build a heifer that’s going to be profitable and successful for the dairy. And also we’re going to be touching on our, with our beef counterparts of things we can do in the transition period of weaning to grower cattle as well.
We’re then going to move on to heifer reproduction and dairy cattle. And eventually get to that animal now having a baby after it’s been defended and protected for a lifetime. And also Dr. Roth, the challenges that come with a transition cow. Whether it be a first calf heifer or multi lactation animal, there’s always, as you like to say, it’s the most challenging day of the year for that animal.
So now that we’ve kind of given everybody an overview of what 2025 is going to look like, I am once again excited and happy to bring Dr. Larry Roth, our Vice President of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions to the table. And Larry, I’m gonna, I’m gonna just put it right out there in the open.
Larry, it’s practically a moniker that you’ve put out there and, and it’s ingrained in all of our brains in Agrarian Solutions. And I should actually have it on the wall behind me. Day one, week one, month one. So if you would for our audience here on Ruminate This, explain what day one, week one, month one means.
Dr. Larry Roth
Perfect. Yeah, be glad to Scott. So let’s think about when the calf is born. Whatever happens that first day, the first week, the first month of its life is going to affect it the entire rest of its life. Be it the high producing dairy cow, be it the beef on dairy calf that is eventually headed to the feedlot.
Little hiccups that come along, be it respiratory, be it digestive upsets, are going to move the animal away from its genetic potential. Scott, we work with a lot of people who are very much into dairy genetics, others that are into beef genetics, and they know all the lineages. They know all of that. With all due respect to them, we can put the best genetics in the world into that cap, but it just seems like we don’t need to do genomics.
We just ask E. coli, salmonella, and rotavirus which calf has the best genetics. And those are the calves that so often seem to come down with those issues. So let’s go ahead and put all the genetics in the world into that calf. I’m all for that, 100%. But let’s defend and protect those genetics. Realizing that these digestive issues, these respiratory issues, can not only kill the animal, but reduce its ability to live up to its genetic potential.
Day one, week one, month one. All of our calf rearing practices, be it on the dairy side or beef side, has to keep that in mind. Day one, week one, month one, affects that animal the entire rest of its life.
Scott Zehr
Oh, it’s so true. And, and, you know, to dissect day one, week one, month one, let’s start at day one, right? So live calf hits the ground. We’ll go dairy situation. You know, we’re going to talk in a little bit about the Agrarian Calf Program. But, the Agrarian Calf Program is not meant to cover up the sins if you would.
It’s meant to help defend and protect that calf for a lifetime. So we can’t ignore the fundamentals as I point to Vince Lombardi in the background. So, walk us through just good practical fundamentals that everybody knows, but let’s just start from first base and work our way around and catfish the ground. What should be happening?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay, Scott, let’s talk about ideal situation and then let’s talk about the real fallen world that we work in. And then how do we help to manage for the real world. So the calf is born. This digestive tract is completely free of both good and bad organisms. So we want the calf to enter the world in an environment that is either sterile or has a greater amount of good health promoting bacteria.
Well, an overabundance of good health promoting bacteria that isn’t going to work. So we do want to have a good clean maternity area. We want to think about getting high quality colostrum and a good amount of colostrum into the calf as soon as possible.Bbecause the colostrum has some of the IgG, the antibodies that are going to take out bad digestive organisms.
And some of this IgG is also going to be absorbed into the body in the first six to 12 hours of life. So let’s put an emphasis on colostrum intake, high quality colostrum, and a good amount of it as soon after birth as possible. Again, it’s all based upon the idea that we have a race going on to dominate the digestive tract.
We’ve got the bad guys like E. coli, Salmonella, all of those words we don’t like to hear. They will grow three times as fast as a good health promoting bacteria. So Scott is pretty simple. We got to get there soon with a large amount of good beneficial bacteria. We got to get there as soon as we can with the IgG and other factors that colostrum brings to put some stumbling blocks in front of these fast growing pathogenic bacteria.
So we want to have a sterile environment or, if at all possible, a high level of good health promoting bacteria. We want to get colostrum into the cow. Well, hopefully we get that to happen. And when does that colostrum get in there? Well, hopefully it gets there at the right time.
So let’s start thinking about how we can maybe assist during management during these periods. That’s where our Day One Calf Gel comes into play. Bring in some beneficial bacteria to inoculate the track. Bring in some of the IGY, the egg based pathogen focused proteins to take out those pathogens and bring some other factors as well. The idea is whoever wins the battle to dominate the digestive track is going to win the battle to dominate the calf’s health.
Scott Zehr
It’s a good point. And I just want to bring us back for a second. Just to draw some perspective, right? You tell us the bad bacteria multiply at a rate three times that of the good bacteria.
So what that’s telling me, what I heard was, every 20 minutes, the bad bacteria double and every hour the good bacteria double, right? So they’re outpacing, right? So think about it like that. And there’s plenty of research behind timing, you know, folks within 2 hours. We all know this. It’s fundamentals.
As soon as possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s fresh or frozen high quality as Dr Roth said. In a perfect world, Larry, we’d feed high quality frozen colostrum that we thaw out responsibly. I like that program. A great quality colostrum replacer, also a viable option. if your management program allows you to feed high quality fresh colostrum, great.
Those things are important for the development of that calf. But I don’t want us to get in the weeds of which colostrum protocol is, better or worse. Where I do want to get to is that next step in the moniker, if you would, day one, week one, month one. So talk to us a little bit about week one and a couple of things that I’ll point out to the audience, right?
It’s, we have several different pathogens that are really wanting to take over that calf. E. coli, Salmonella, Clostridium, we have Coronavirus, Rotavirus, Crypto’s always lurking in the background, waiting to strike. What’s the importance of week one in terms of the pathogen?
Dr. Larry Roth
Great question, Scott. What’s the importance of week one? Well, we started off by talking about that first feeding of colostrum. Well, do we come back with a second feeding? Is there a third feeding or a fourth feeding? What happens for colostrum being fed? Well, the longer we can feed the colostrum, the better off we are, but that takes a little bit more effort.
So often we want to get off to milk replacer as soon as what we can. But colostrum, even after the first six to 12 hours has some benefits. Still, there’s a little bit higher level of pathogen focused proteins in it. But the challenge is that as that calf ages a little bit, if we can call the first week aging, but it starts to produce some protein digesting enzymes.
We got to make use of the diet. Unfortunately, those protein digesting enzymes are going to take the IgG that’s in the colostrum and turn it into amino acids and break it down. And those IgGs don’t get the opportunity to take out the pathogen. So we see that the blood levels of antibodies peak probably 18 to 24 hours after birth. And then they start to go down.
And so the calf now goes from a high level of blood antibodies to a fairly rapidly depletes. The calf’s immune system, it’s military to defend the body isn’t up and able to defend itself. So if we can picture this, blood antibody levels start to go down relatively rapidly. And it’s probably not going to be until two to three weeks of age that the calf’s immune system is producing enough antibodies to protect itself.
So we come into an area that we can call high risk. You’ll see a lot of graphs that call this gap between high passive immunity with the absorbed antibodies versus the high level of body generated antibodies. We see this as a high-risk area. I prefer to call it Death Valley because that’s where calves go to die.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, that’s what they do.
Dr. Larry Roth
And, the deeper that Valley is, the greater opportunity there is to lose the calf. The broader the valley is, the greater the opportunity to lose the calves. But again, we put all the genetics in the world into this calf. And is it going to make it through Death Valley or not? I don’t know.
So we need to be thinking about maybe extended feeding of colostrum even though the IgG is going to get chopped up for nutrition purposes. There’s still a little bit of value there. There’s other things in colostrum that help to defend the calf against invading agents.
But we need to be thinking about calf comfort, calf nutrition, everything we can do to tip the balance of the scales in favor of the calf’s health. Because we know that death valley is coming up and how are we going to navigate that valley. So we got to be cognizant of calf comfort. Just all of the invaders, bacteria and viruses that come along. All of the potential things that could happen.
And then, you know, so often we get calves mingled, be it in a group reared setting, or even if they’re in individual hutches, especially if they’re inside and the crates are right next to each other, we get mingling, mixing of the…
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Nose to nose contact.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. So for that first week, we’re constantly thinking, what do we do to defend and protect the calf against all of the insults that are coming to attack it. All of the different bacteria and viruses, all of the things that lessen calf comfort. You know, we think about air quality. All of these things are so central to the calf navigating through that first week of life. Because if we start to lose control of these different factors, well, day one, week one, month one.
Scott Zehr
I think everything you just described is why I have yet to see the perfectly built calf barn. It’s just, there’s just so many challenges to think through and…
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
…and it’s almost like you pick your battles when you’re building a new calf raising facility.
Dr. Larry Roth
Scott, that’s true. You know, the plan has not been the perfect calf facility built. And that’s fine. But let’s just understand the different challenges and risks and put together a management program to help calves handle that particular environment.
Scott Zehr
So Larry, you mentioned something, our Convert Day One Calf Gel. And the IGY pathogen focused proteins. So to me, this is, I think just mind blowing technology that’s been around for a lot of years commercially available.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And you know, the old timers knew it existed long before it was commercially available and we could dive into the story of the old timers, what they used to do. But rather than that, let’s go to what are these IGY pathogen focused proteins and what are they doing to assist that calf?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay, great. So, Scott, you talked about the old timers and you know, so often when I go around speaking about calf rearing practices and calf health, somebody will come up afterwards and say, “yeah, my mother used to do this or my grandmother used to do this. They would take a raw egg and mix it into the calf’s milk when the calf was starting to feel poorly.” Well, that’s a good practice. Maybe if we had done that a little bit earlier, the calf wouldn’t have started to go downhill.
But, the idea is there’s these pathogen focused proteins that are especially designed to attach to different pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and protozoa attach and hold them so that other elements of the immune system can come and destroy them or latch on to these pathogens so the pathogens can not attach to the digestive lining and have a whole punch into the castle wall.
So very central part of the immune system, pathogen focused proteins, especially designed for different pathogens, kind of a locking key system. But again, it’s the unique beauty of how the calf’s body is designed.
Scott Zehr
So Dr. Roth, with the IGY right? Those are basically the avion equivalent of IgG. So, these IGYs in our convert day one calf gel, for the coverage we have for all the different pathogens: E. coli, Salmonella, Corona, Rhoda, Crypto, and Clostridium, they’re bovine specific, but why and how do they become bovine specific? Where do we get these IGY from?
Dr. Larry Roth
So Scott, the chicken is relatively unique in that we can vaccinate it. We can put bovine forms, generally killed forms, might be modified lion forms of different bacteria, viruses, and protozoa that are going to make our cattle sick. We can vaccinate hens with those pathogens, and that chicken is going to make the IGY, it’s own antibodies and put those into the egg yolk.
So it’s just like us when we’re exposed to pathogens in our environment, our immune system has adaptive parts that say, hey, here’s a pathogen, let’s get geared up here. We’re going to make some of these heat seeking missiles to go out and destroy these pathogens. That’s what our body does. That’s what happens when we get vaccinated. That’s when we’re exposed to things in the environment.
The chicken is no different. The chicken says, “Hey, I’ve got these pathogens in my environment. I want my chick to survive, so I’m gonna put these pathogen focused proteins into the egg yolk so that the developing chick absorbs and has those pathogen focused proteins to protect it early on.”
Now, in the calf, the question is how long do these pathogen focused proteins last, probably going to be a day to two in the digestive track. And then we need to start replenishing those proteins. So on the dairy side, that’s relatively easy. We take our Big Calf Powder and B stands for bacteria. We got beneficial bacteria, IG stands for, maybe I’m not supposed to say that, immunoglobulins, but the pathogen focused proteins.
So we’re continually replenishing the pathogen focused proteins in the calf’s digestive tract to take out the bad guys. It’s relatively simple. Just understand the environment that the calf is in, the challenges that it faces, and what do we do to help the calf defend itself against all of these bad guys trying to take it out.
Scott Zehr
So, we’ve talked about day one, we’ve talked about week one. We’re kind of stretching beyond week one right now with, as we talk about Death Valley. You know, that calf passive immunity is at an all time low right there around day 10. And it’s gonna be till day 21 or so when that active immunity kicks in.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep.
Scott Zehr
So you mentioned Big Calf. What’s the difference between Big Calf Powder and Convert day one calf gel?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay, great question. First of all, Scott, I’m gonna answer your question. But let me give you a pet peeve. Day one gel. That means I can only give it day one, right? So, I kind of like to call it calf gel.
Because I can give it all of the entire life of that calf. Because we have these pathogen focused proteins that come from the egg yolk, which are going to be resistant to the protein digesting enzymes that the calf secretes. We take other products, and I don’t want to mention any by name, but they’re certainly very prominent.
And shall we say expensive products, Scott, that are based upon colostrum IgG, and they can say that. They’ve got the clearance from FDA to say that. So they’re very expensive, but we can’t give it after that first day. So what do we do, Scott, if that cap is day 10, like you said, at the depth of Death Valley and it comes down with something or day 21 or whatever?
That’s where the cap gel comes into play. We can give it the entire life of that calf because it’s got the beneficial bacteria to replenish the track, and it also has the pathogen focused proteins that are resistant to protein digesting enzymes. So, I went off on a little bit of a tangent here, Scott, but your question was what is the difference between the two?
Well, they’re very much the same. Beneficial bacteria, replenish what might be lost. Always make sure we got good bacteria coming in to keep the digestive tract pH below what the pathogens like. Higher the pH, more favorable for the pathogens. We’re not trying to make the calf acidotic. That’s not going to happen. But just keep the pH below what the pathogens like.
And then continue to bring in the pathogen focused proteins. I like to call them the heat seeking missiles to target the bad guys and take them out. Let’s do that every day because we’ve got to understand that the calf is going to be open to invasion, open to defeat, until the immune system is able to defend the calf.
When is that going to happen, Scott? We can say day 21, but maybe it’s going to be later, might be sooner. But again, we started our conversation talking about the tremendous genetic investment in these calves, why put that calf at risk? My goodness, Scott, we look at what some of these calves are worth today.
Some of these beef on dairy calves are going to be $800, $900, $1,000? We look at the big calf powder, 10 cents a day. Do I want to put this $900 or $1,000 animal, that was my initial investment. Do I want to leave that animal open to invasion and defeat by these pathogens, or do I want to use a product like the calf gel is going to be what, maybe four and a half, five dollars?
Depend upon the tube that we use. And then use a product that’s 10 cents a day to make sure that I’m continually bringing in beneficial bacteria, continually bringing in the pathogen focused proteins because we know the environment is full of the bad guys. We know that things come along. We know there’s changes in weather, we know that air quality isn’t always what it ought to be, we know that new calves are coming in and they intermingle and they each bring in their own organisms.
So, constantly Scott, I’m thinking what can come along day one, week one, month one, and interrupt this stable calf. If there ever is such a thing as a stable calf. What’s coming along? And am I prepared to help that calf through these different challenges? That’s the whole question behind day one, week one, month one.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, and I think that’s a good segue into this month one conversation, right? Because, within that first month, we have, you know, the passive immunity, the depths of death valley. We have the active immune system kicking in, say two to three to three and a half weeks. But within that first month, we have all those challenges and now that calf is, you know, let’s say she’s a month old.
Well, looking forward, she’s only 25 to 30 days away from being weaned? Obviously if she’s had any setbacks in the first 30 days. 60 day weaning, 55 day weaning, probably not going to be ideal for that calf, right? So you mentioned Big Calf Powder being fed. And you mentioned 10 cents per calf per day, right?
And if you buy the big pail of powder that’s going to be the most economical investment. Is that meant to be fed just for the first, say, 21 days till the active immune system kicks in? Is there benefits of feeding that the entire milk phase? What’s your take on that?
Dr. Larry Roth
Great question, Scott. When should we be feeding the Big Calf Powder? I’m going to say all the way up to weaning. Because we’re constantly wanting to protect the calf. We don’t know what changes are coming. We don’t know what challenges are going to come upon the calf. So we’re always preparing the calf for hiccups that can come along, different challenges.
Plus let’s go back to our nutrient allocation story. We talk about that on the mycotoxin side, Scott, we can have low levels of pathogens that come along. Well, they’re causing problems in the digestive tract. Now the digestive tract has to repair itself. The immune system has to mount a response to these low level of pathogens that’s taking nutrients away from the calf growing like we want it to. Be at the heifer to be a replacement to be for dairy cow.
Any challenges that come along cause a, shall we say, negative reallocation of nutrients, away from the most productive purpose, which is growth. And the nutrients now have to go to defending the calf and just keeping it alive. So that the neat part of the Big Calf Powder is it’s got usefulness all of the way from day one, let’s do the colostrum, let’s do the calf gel day one, and then let’s go over to the Big Calf Powder and use it all of the way through.
And let’s just say that for whatever reason, the cap does have to happen to come down with some respiratory or digestive issues, we’ve got the Calf Gel ready to come in and compliment what the Big Powder is doing and also come in and compliment antibiotics or electrolytes. Complement other therapies that’s going to be given to the calf.
Scott Zehr
I think that’s a great point. You mentioned that the convert Calf Gel, right, be using it on day one for really, it’s kind of like ease of use, right? It’s a paste. We can get it in the calf’s mouth.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
We’re going to feed them colostrum right off. They’re going to wash it down. Cool thing about the big calf powder is that a 5X dose of the big calf powder would be equivalent to a 15 mil dose of the gel. So there is that opportunity. And folks, I have used this product myself. It mixes well in milk and it actually does a good job of mixing in colostrum.
Maybe if you have super thick colostrum, there might be some challenges. You’d maybe want to go with the bolus. We also have it in a bolus form or the gel, whichever you’re comfortable with. And I think that’s cool with the flexibility of the technology behind the product.
You talk about feeding big calf during the entire milk phase. So Dr. Roth, I’m just going to do some quick cowboy math here and say 10 cents a day from day two to day 60 is 59 days. That’s $5 and 90 cents. And if I’m a dairy farmer and I’m using the single dose tube of convert, I’m probably going to expect to pay somewhere around that six, $7 range.
So landed, let’s just go with $13 per calf. Now I’m gonna do my cowboy math again and say, $13 per calf for the first 60 days for defending and protecting that calf for 60 days, to me that sounds more economical than some of the competitive, truly day one calf gels on the market.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely. They give you just protection on that first day. Scott, I think, there’d be, I want people to walk away from this podcasts thinking about what day does my calf face a challenge? Certainly that first day, but we don’t know when else the challenges are going to come. Or they’re probably going to come when we least expect it.
So let’s have a program in place where we’re continually anticipating some issue. And we’re continually helping the calf to defend and protect itself against the issues that come. You talk about return on investment, $13. And how much was that calf worth? How much was that calf worth? How much was that calf worth? So now I…
Scott Zehr
Yeah, I mean, if you’re growing beef on dairy calves, you can use that example, right? But the dairy farmer is not going to be the one to feed that out, right? So let’s go talk about that heifer calf. That replacement calf. Well we have a guest coming up in a couple of weeks that’s going to talk about 3,500, 4,000 heifers that he has seen recently.
These, these baby wet calves and the dairy replacement side, I mean the, the money we put into the genetics. You know, anywhere, let’s go $20, $30, $40, $50 for assorted semen. Depending on your program, it could be in the hundreds of dollars for assorted semen.
You know, conception rates, let’s think about that Heifers, let’s say you’re running 1.5 to 2 services per conception in 100 semen. I mean it, there’s a lot of, a lot of cost that goes into that pregnancy. And so what’s the value of that calf?
Well, Dr. Roth, you know, recently we had a guest on talking about how the virgin heifer population in the U. S. is at an all time low. Supply and demand, right? These heifer calves are worth a lot. I mean, easily six, $700 out of the gate, or more. And so it’s…
Dr. Larry Roth
Scott let’s talk about transition issues for the cow. But as her first lactation heifer or be it a mature cow, those who are more likely to have a transition issue, milk fever, ketosis, go down the list. They are more likely to have had issues day one, week one, month one. And now that $13 that we saved back as a cow, is causing us problems two years down the road.
Does that cow now wash out of the program because of these transition issues? The calf that has digestive upsets today runs the risk of scar tissue being formed and that digestive tract is never set up to absorb nutrients like it could have been. So we’re never going to get the milk production that we could have, but we saved $13, Scott.
If milk is $20 a hundred weight, man, how quickly we could have got that back. So again, continually think, what are we doing to defend and protect our genetics? So they number one, stay alive. Number two, express themselves when that animal reaches the intended objective, be it in the herd producing milk, or be it as, a feedlot animal. Defend and protect.
Scott Zehr
I think as we wrap up today, there’s a lot of really cool things we’re able to do with our beneficial bacteria, the IGY pathogen focused proteins. And Dr. Roth, there’s information that we have collected over time to back some of this up too. There’s a lot of data that I’ve seen in my time at Agrarian on the IGYs and their ability to defend and protect that calf.
But speaking of like big calf and convert specifically, there’s information that we can provide that demonstrates that these products do work. And it’s not meant to cover up your sins, right? Dr. Roth, can you use convert gel to treat that calf for scours? Sure.
Dr. Larry Roth
As part of a therapeutic program, complementary to other practices.
Scott Zehr
Exactly. But an ounce of prevention is worth a dollar of cure every time.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
What’s your parting words for us today, Dr. Roth?
Dr. Larry Roth
Very simple, Scott. Let’s go back to the moniker you were talking about. Day one, week one, month one. All of our calf rearing decisions have to keep that in mind. What are we doing to defend and protect our genetic investment day one, week one, month one? If we keep that in mind, our calf rearing practices are going to be more successful, and we’re going to end up with more money in the bank.
Scott Zehr
That’s the mic drop right there. I can’t sum it up any better than that. If you’re listening to this episode right now, Convert Calf Gel is on special. And if you look in the show notes, you can click on the link to our website and check it out and try it on your own calves. Give us some feedback on what you think.
So with that, Dr. Roth, I appreciate you taking time out of your day today to visit with us about the Agrarian Calf Program, including Convert and Big Calf Powder. And we’ll be talking to you again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth
All right. Thank you, Scott.
Scott Zehr
Thank you, Larry.
