Breaking free from the chains of the past Where
truth moves faster than a Holstein calf No law
waiting on some printed page We're charting new
ground in the digital age From genomic codes
to robot facts We cut through the noise, no hold
them back not your daddy's dairy news tonight
we're sparking Welcome back to the Bullvine Podcast,
where we cut through the dairy industry noise
to get you the insights that actually matter
for your operation. We aren't here to sell you
products. We're here to make sure you're still
in business 10 years from now. And today we are
diving deep into a feature piece that hits on
something I think every single producer listening
has screamed about at least once. We're talking
about the weaning dip. Oh, the universal headache.
It really is. You have these... calves and for
six or seven weeks they look absolutely fantastic
they're bouncing off the walls their coats are
shining like new pennies and they are just hammering
their milk allowance you think to yourself i
finally cracked the code i am a genius calf raiser
i've been there you feel like a rock star and
then When you start the transition, you pull
the trigger on weaning and it's just like someone
let the air out of the tires. Exactly. It is
that frustrating period where intake just drops,
the ears start to droop, respiratory issues spike,
and you spend the next three weeks basically
playing nurse. You go from genius to firefighter
in about 48 hours. It's the classic two steps
forward, one step back scenario, or, you know,
sometimes two steps back and a vet bill. And
for the longest time, the narrative in the industry,
and I've been guilty of saying this myself, is
that this is just the cost of doing business.
You know, calves are fragile creatures. Weaning
is a stressful event. Biology is hard. You just,
you budget for the treatments, you expect the
slump, and you just power through it. Right.
It's viewed as bad luck or just inevitable, like
rain during hay season. Yeah. We're looking at
a stack of research today, including some heavy
hitter work from Dr. Michael Steele's group up
at the University of Gulf, and some really comprehensive
data on engineering gut health that suggests
we have been looking at this all wrong. And frankly,
the hook for today's deep dive is a little uncomfortable.
I always get nervous when you say uncomfortable.
What are we looking at? The data suggests that
the weaning dip isn't bad luck. It isn't even
inevitable. It is actually a reflection of decisions
made weeks earlier in a weird way. The weaning
dip is something we are engineering. Whoa, okay.
That is a heavy accusation to start the show
with. You're telling me that when I walk into
the barn and see a calf with a snotty nose and
scours right after weaning, I did that? Not intentionally,
obviously. No one wakes up and wants to get calf
pneumonia. But the system did it. The protocol
did it. And we really need to unpack this because
the stakes are way, way higher than just a vet
bill today. Well, let's set the stage on those
stakes because right now margins are tight. Everyone
listening knows that feed costs are up. Labor
is. It's impossible to find. So when we talk
about a calf stalling out, usually the farmer
is thinking about the immediate cost, the medicine,
the time, the loss of game for that month. But
looking at these notes, you're saying the hole
in the bucket is bigger than that. Much bigger.
This is where we had to look at the long term
data. There's this fascinating research from
Dr. Michael Steele's group. combined with work
by Svensson and Holtgren, and they tracked these
animals long -term. And they documented that
a calf experiencing diarrhea in that first month
of life produces roughly 350 kilograms less milk
in her first lactation. Hold on. Let me just
pause there. 350 kilograms. That is, what, roughly
770 pounds of milk? Gone. Vaporized. Yeah. Before
she even enters the parlor. Just because she
had scours as a baby. Exactly. And that is not
a rounding error. That is profit. If you multiply
that across a herd, say you have a 20 % scour
rate, the numbers get, yeah, they get terrifying.
And that's just diarrhea. Dr. Alex Bach in Spain
found that heifers treated for respiratory disease
before weaning have significantly higher odds
of dying or being cold before they even reach
their first calving. We're talking survival rates
running 10 to 20 percentage points lower. So
the calf recovers. She looks fine. She joins
the herd. But the damage is already done. The
immune insult reverberates. It literally changes
her metabolism. There's a recent study that showed
suboptimal nutrition and health events in that
pre -weaning phase. Create metabolic differences
that you can still see in her glucose metabolism
when she's a lactating cow. Essentially, you
are programming her genetics to be less efficient.
That is the part that is so hard to wrap your
head around. Because the treatment costs, you
know, the bottle of antibiotics or the electrolytes,
that's visible. I see that on the bill this month.
But the 770 pounds of milk I don't get two years
from now, that's invisible money. It's what economists
call the implementation gap. It is so hard to
convince a producer to spend a dollar today to
save $5 in two years. It's just human nature
to optimize for what we can see right now. But
what we're going to discuss today is that least
cost thinking in the calf barn might be the most
expensive decision on the farm. OK, so let's
get into the how. If we are engineering this
crash, how are we doing it? What's the mechanism?
Because I feed my calves well. I use good replacer.
I use good starter. Where is the disconnect?
We have to start with biology and we have to
stop thinking of a calf as a small cow. Well,
it has four legs and moves. It looks like a cow.
It does. But for the first five weeks. biologically
speaking, it is not a ruminant. It is essentially
a monogastric animal. It's more like a pig or
a human baby than a cow. The rumen is just a
collapsed bag. It's doing nothing. The esophageal
groove shunts the milk right past it. The small
intestine is doing all the heavy lifting. Okay,
so weeks one through five, we're running on a
single stomach system. Correct. And here's the
kicker that I think most people just gloss over.
The enzyme system is immature. You have pancreatic
proteases, the enzymes that break down protein.
And at birth, they are operating at a tiny fraction
of their adult capacity. They mature really slowly
over those first three to four weeks. So the
machinery to digest food is basically, it's under
construction. Exactly. And that machinery is
built to a very specific blueprint. It is designed
by nature to digest milk proteins, casein, whey.
That is what the enzymes recognize. That is the
lock for the key. I sense a but coming on here.
But milk protein is expensive. Whey powder markets
fluctuate. Skim milk powder is pricey. So what
do we do in the industry to cut costs on milk
replacer? We substitute. We use plant proteins.
Soybean meal, wheat gluten, hydrolyzed wheat
protein. We look at the tag, we see 20 % crude
protein, and we think, great, protein is protein.
Right, the crude protein number on the tag matches.
The math works. My nutritionist says it meets
the specs. The math works on the tag. The math
does not work in the gut. Because that immature
enzyme system looks at that soy protein and says,
aye. I don't know what to do with this. There
was a study by Antio that compared nitrogen digestibility.
It showed this massive gap. The all -milk formulas
were digested almost completely. The plant -supplemented
formulas, not so much. So where does that undigested
plant protein go? I mean, it doesn't just disappear.
It passes through the small intestine and dumps
into the hindgut. And that is a disaster. Because
now you have this high -quality protein sitting
in the hindgut, and it becomes a buffet for the
wrong bacteria. It ferments. It feeds pathogens
like clostridium and E. coli. So the bad bugs
throw a party. A huge party. And it's not just
the bacteria. Soy protein specifically contains
these antinutritional factors, glycinin and beta
-conglycin. These actually cause an allergic
reaction in the gut lining. It flattens the villi.
Those are the little finger -like things that
absorb nutrients. Yes. They provide the surface
area. If you flatten them, you lose absorption
capacity. So you save pennies on the replacer
by using plant protein, but you trigger gut inflammation,
villi blunting, and potentially scours. Because
the system literally couldn't handle the fuel
you put in it. That is a classic case of looking
at the spreadsheet and missing the biology. We
are trying to force a square peg into a round
hole because the square peg is five cents cheaper.
And we pay for it with that 350 kilograms of
lost milk later, but we don't connect the dots.
We just think, oh, that calf has a sensitive
stomach. No, she has a damaged stomach. Okay,
so that's the monogastric phase. Don't cheap
out on the protein source. Got it. But then we
hit the transition. Weeks five to eight. We are
trying to turn this animal into a ruminant. We
are introducing grain, starter, maybe some hay.
This is where the wheels usually fall off for
me. This is why the intake stalls. This is the
danger zone. The ruminant is transforming from
that collapsed bag into a fermentation chamber.
And this brings us to what I think is the most
fascinating part of the research notes. Substrate
specificity? Substrate specificity? That sounds
like something I'd need a PhD to understand.
Break that down for us regular folks. It's actually
pretty simple, but it's absolutely critical.
Think of the rumen bacteria as workers in a factory.
But they aren't generalists. They're specialists.
Some guys know how to weld. Some guys know how
to do electrical. In the rumen, some bacteria
digest starch. Some digest fiber. Some digest
sugars. Okay, so you have a specialized workforce.
Right, and Dr. Phil Cardoso at the University
of Illinois has done great work on this. The
bacteria have specific enzymatic machinery for
specific foods. Now imagine you run a factory
that builds cars. You have an assembly line,
you have sheet metal guys, you have engine guys.
Suddenly, without warning, the supply truck shows
up and... dumps a load of bicycle parts on the
floor. The factory stops. The factory shuts down.
The car builders look at the bicycle chains and
handlebars and say, we can't use this. You have
to fire the car builders and hire bicycle builders.
That takes time. In the rumen, that is what happens
when we change ingredients. The bacterial community
has to reorganize. It creates a lag. So this
is about consistency. It is entirely about consistency.
And I'm not just talking about feeding grain.
I'm talking about the specific ingredients in
that grain. Give me an example. Because usually
a pellet is a pellet, right? I buy a specific
starter. It looks the same every week. To the
human eye, yes. But let's look at the research
by Paul Menani. They looked at something as simple
as molasses. To a farmer, molasses is just the
sticky stuff that makes the feed taste good and
keeps the dust down. But they compared cane molasses
versus beet molasses. I wouldn't have thought
there was a difference. I mean, sugar is sugar.
Huge difference. Cane molasses is about 50 %
sucrose, but it also has high levels of glucose
and fructose. Beet molasses is higher in sucrose,
about 61%, but it has almost zero glucose and
fructose. Okay, so different sugar profiles.
Why does the bug care? to a bacteria that is
a completely different fuel source it's like
switching from diesel to gasoline you switch
from cane to beat because the mill got a deal
on molasses that week the bacteria that were
thriving on glucose starve the community crashes
digestion stops the calf stops growing this is
the least cost trap the least cost trap this
is where the feed mill computer says hey Beet
molasses is cheaper this week. Let's swap it
out. The tag still says molasses. The protein
level is the same. The energy calculation is
the same. But the biology inside the calf goes
haywire. Exactly. We prioritize the consistent
nutrient profile on the paper, the label. But
we ignore the consistent ingredient profile the
bacteria need. And when that bacterial population
is unstable, you get... erratic production of
volatile fatty acids, or VFAs, specifically butyrate.
And butyrate is key, right. It is vital. VFAs
are the chemical signal that tells the rumen
papillae to grow. So erratic feed equals erratic
gut development. You get short papillae, poor
absorption, and a calf that just can't handle
weaning. So the solution is fixed formulations.
Telling the mill, I want this specific recipe
and don't change it even if the price of corn
gluten moves. Yes. Fixed formulations. But...
That comes with the price tag. I was going to
say, the mill isn't going to like that. And they
are going to charge me for the privilege. They
make their money on the spread, buying whatever
byproduct is cheap that week. The industry estimate
is a premium of about 2 % to 4%. So we are talking
maybe $8 to $12 per calf. over the rearing period.
$12 a calf. If I'm raising a thousand calves,
that's $12 ,000 straight off the bottom line.
That is a real number. That's a new piece of
equipment. That's labor. I can hear the listeners
right now tightening their wallets. It is. And
that is where the debate happens. Is that $12
worth it? If you ask a least cost economist,
they might say no. But if you ask the biologist
who knows about that 770 pounds of lost milk,
or the vet who is treating the respiratory cases
because the calf's immune system crashed during
the feed switch, the answer is absolutely yes.
It's the difference between price and cost. The
price of the feed is higher. The cost of the
calf might be lower. Precisely. And we see this
in the field. Operations that run fixed formulations
generally report much steadier intakes. You don't
see those days where the calves just stare at
the bucket. They keep eating because the factory
never has to shut down to retool. Okay, so we
have fixed the ingredients. We're spending the
extra $12. We are taking a hit on the wallet
for the sake of the gut. Now let's talk about
the additives because everyone loves a good additive.
Probiotics are the rage right now. I feel like
every salesperson that drives up the lane has
a magic powder that fixes everything. A fairy
dust approach. Right. But the source material
here points at a huge implementation gap with
probiotics. It says we're basically throwing
money away. We're doing it lazily. We're treating
the calf like a bucket. Just throw the bugs in.
But remember the two phases we talked about.
The monogastric phase and the ruminant phase.
Different environments. Totally different climates.
The small intestine, where the milk goes, is
microerobic. It has some oxygen. So if you want
a probiotic to work there, you need bugs that
like oxygen, bacillus, lactobacillus. These are
facultative anaerobes. They can handle air. Okay,
that makes sense. But the rumen, the rumen is
an anaerobic fermentation chamber. Oxygen is
toxic there. It needs bugs like megasfera or
butyrovibrio. So if I take a probiotic designed
for the gut and dump it into the starter feed
for the rumen... It's useless. It might even
be dead before it gets there. Dr. Mike Fly from
the USDA has this perfect analogy. He says using
the same probiotic blend for both is like planting
the same crops in two completely different climates.
You can plant a cactus in a rainforest, but don't
expect it to thrive. That is a great analogy.
But I bet if I walked into a feed room right
now, I'd see the same white powder being mixed
into the milk and top dressed on the grain. 100%.
And then the farmer says probiotics don't work.
No, they don't work if you put the wrong bug
in the wrong place. We need stage -matched programs.
There are companies doing this. Kalmbach Feeds
has a system with Lifeguard for milk and Optifirm
XL for starter. But you have to look for it.
You have to ask the rep, is this bug designed
for where I am putting it? But again, this costs
money. A stage -matched program is more inventory,
more management, maybe a higher price point.
I'm playing devil's advocate here. Is it worth
the hassle? It is a fair question. And here is
the honest truth. If you have a perfect calf
program with 0 % mortality and 1 % scours, you
probably won't see a huge ROI from this. Because
you're already winning. Right. If your baseline
is excellent, the marginal gain is small. But
if you are fighting scours, if you are seeing
that dip, you have variation, this is a tool
that actually targets the mechanism of the problem.
It's not just hope. It's engineering. I want
to pivot to something that the source material
calls... The free lunch. Because so far, let's
be honest, we have spent money. We spent money
on all milk protein. We spent money on fixed
formulations. We spent money on fancy probiotics.
My checkbook is bleeding. But there is one thing
here that costs zero dollars, and yet it might
be the hardest thing for farmers to actually
do. The stress calendar. The stress calendar.
This sounds like something my therapist would
recommend. It effectively is therapy for the
calf. It's based on research by Dr. Jeff Carroll
at the USDA. It's all about cortisol. The stress
hormone. Right. We know that weaning raises cortisol.
That is unavoidable. You're taking away the milk.
You're often moving the calf, changing the diet.
Cortisol goes up for three to five days. When
cortisol is up, the immune system is suppressed.
That's just biology. Okay, manageable. Three
to five days, we can handle that. Manageable,
if that was the only thing happening. Wow. But
what do we do in the real world? Well, I can
tell you what we do. The crew is there. The calves
are locked up. So we think, hey, while we're
moving them, let's vaccinate them. And let's
dehorn them. And maybe let's brand them or tag
them. We stack the jobs. It's efficient. It saves
me labor. It is efficient for the humans. It
is catastrophic for the calf. Why? Because the
stress isn't additive. It's multiplicative. If
you stack weaning, dehorning, and vaccination,
you don't just get stress level three. You get
a cortisol spike that lasts for two weeks or
more. You are hammering the immune system into
the ground right when the calf is most vulnerable.
So we are creating a two -week window where that
calf has basically zero defenses, and then we
wonder why she gets pneumonia. Exactly. We are
prioritizing our labor efficiency over her physiological
reality. The free lunch is simply unstacking
those events. So walk us through the proposed
calendar. If I want to do this right, what does
the schedule look like? Because I need to know
if this is even feasible. Okay, let's work backward
from weaning. First, disbudding or dehorning.
Do that four to five weeks before weaning. That
feels early for some people. You're doing that
on milk? It gets it out of the way. The gaffer
covers. Cortisol returns to baseline long before
the next stressor. Then, weaning. Make it a standalone
event. Just wean. Don't move them that day if
you can avoid it. Certainly don't jab them with
anything. Do a gradual step down over five to
seven days or even 10 to 14 days if you can.
OK, so she's weaned. She's stressed, but she's
handling it. When do we vaccinate? Because usually
we vaccinate at weaning to protect them. That
is the mistake. Wait, wait seven to 14 days post
weaning. Let that cortisol spike settle. Let
her immune system come back online so she can
actually respond to the vaccine. If you vaccinate
a stressed calf, you are often wasting the vaccine
anyway because the immune system is too suppressed
to build a titer. That's a great point. We pay
for the vaccine, but if the calf is stressed,
we might as well be injecting water. Precisely.
And then finally, regrouping or moving pens.
Do that two weeks post weaning. So we are spreading
this out over six weeks instead of one afternoon.
Yes. And I know what you are thinking. I can
hear the Northeast farmer screaming at his radio
right now. I don't have the time. I don't have
the people. It's the reality of labor shortages.
Stacking is a survival mechanism for the farmer.
I can't catch these heifers four separate times.
It is a valid complaint, but we have to acknowledge
the cost. There was a producer in Minnesota mentioned
in the source material. He did the bullet and
implemented the spacing. He saw a one -third
drop in post -weaning respiratory treatment.
One -third. 33%. 33 % reduction. Just by changing
the calendar. So yes, it takes more labor to
catch the lung multiple times. But how much labor
did he save by not treating sick calves for three
weeks? How much money did he save on antibiotics?
And how much more milk will those heifers give
in two years? That is the trade -off. It's busy
work versus productive work. Treating sick calves
is the worst kind of work. It's demoralizing,
it's expensive, and it means you failed somewhere
upstream. Exactly. So if you can't do the full
spread, Do some spread. Just don't dehorn and
wean on the same day. That's the cardinal sin.
I want to zoom out a bit. We've covered the biology,
the feed, the schedule, but implementing this,
it's overwhelming. If I go home and try to change
my protein source, my probiotic, and my schedule
all on Monday, my team is going to quit, and
my calves might actually do worse because of
the chaos. That is a huge risk. The systems approach
sounds great in a deep dive, but on the farm,
chaos is the enemy. The recommendation here is
a phased implementation. Do not change everything
at once. So what's the roadmap? Give me the steps.
Months one and two, just measure. Establish a
baseline. You can't fix what you don't track.
Lock in your ingredient specs with the mill.
Stop the variation. That's step one. Stabilize
the factory. Right. Months three and four, optimize
the milk. Maybe look at that all milk protein
if you aren't using it. Get the growth happening.
Months five and six, the stress calendar. Start
moving the dates around. Then month seven plus.
That's when you layer in the fancy probiotics.
Why wait on the probiotics? Because if you put
expensive probiotics on top of an unstable diet,
you are wasting your money. You can't supplement
your way out of bad management. Fix the substrate
first, then add the bugs. That is crucial advice.
Don't ice a cake that hasn't finished baking.
And here's the contrarian take. And this is important
because we value honesty here. This approach
isn't for everyone. Who shouldn't do this? If
you are selling calves. If you are selling bull
calves or selling weaned heifers, you are not
the one capturing that 350 kilograms of milk
in two years. The next guy is. So purely economically,
does it make sense for you to spend 12 extra
dollars on feed and extra labor? Probably not.
The market doesn't pay you enough premium for
a gut -optimized calf. hard truth of the market.
Unless you have a buyer who knows the data and
pays for it, you're donating that margin to the
next guy. Which is rare. Also, if you have bad
basics, there's a great quote from Dr. Paul Rapnicki
says, the fancy stuff doesn't fix the fundamentals.
If you have dirty water, wet bedding, and bad
ventilation, buying a stage -matched probiotic
is like putting a spoiler on a rusted out car.
It looks cool, but the engine is still dead.
Fix the water. Fix the bedding. Then worry about
the enzyme maturation rates. And there is the
cash flow reality. We have to be sensitive to
that. We are talking about an ROI that takes
18 to 24 months. Cash flow is king. If you are
on the brink and that extra $12 per calf breaks
the bank today, you won't be in business in two
years to collect the extra milk. So this strategy
requires a business that is stable enough to
float the investment. It's a luxury of stability
to be able to optimize for the future. But for
those who can, the payoff is massive. It is.
It's the difference between surviving and thriving.
All right, let's bring this down to the ground.
I'm a farmer. I'm driving to the feed store right
now. I've listened to you dissect this for the
last hour. What do I actually do? Give me the
actionable insights. I need three things. Okay,
let's break it down. Immediate, medium, and long
term. Start with this week. What can I do today
that costs nothing? Immediate. The stress calendar.
Go look at your schedule. Stop stacking events.
Even if you just separate one thing, do not dehorn
and wean in the same week. It costs you nothing
but planning. Just do it. Done. That's an easy
win. What about the next few months? Medium term.
Yeah. The substrate audit. Talk to your nutritionist.
Ask the hard question. Are we on a least cost
formulation that changes every week? Ask what
the cost would be for a fixed formulation. Is
it $8? Is it $12? Compare that to your treatment
costs. Think about the factory workers in the
room and retooling every time the truck shows
up. And long -term. Long -term. Data. Data tracking.
You have to link early health to lactation data.
You cannot manage the weaning dip impact on milk
yield if you don't know which heifers had scours
two years ago. Most farms have the records, but
they aren't connected. The calf software doesn't
talk to the cow software. Connect them. See if
your sick calves are becoming your low -production
cows. The data will tell you if the investment
is worth it. It's closing the loop, moving from
guessing to knowing. Exactly. You know, what
strikes me about this whole conversation is that
it puts the power back in the farmer's hands.
The weaning dip feels like bad luck. It feels
like, ah, it's just that time of year. But looking
at it as an engineering problem, as a series
of decisions, that's actually empowering. It
means you can fix it. It's not the weather. It's
the protocol. And sure, it might cost a little
more up front, but 770 pounds of milk? That's
a lot of milk to leave on the table. It's a tanker
load pretty quickly, if you have a decent -sized
herd. Well, this has been an eye -opener. It's
dense, but it matters. It does. The calves don't
care about tradition. They only reflect the system
you build for them. That's a great line to end
on. They only reflect the system you build for
them. Exactly. This has been another Bullvine
podcast from The Bullvine. For more straight
-talking industry analysis, head to www .thebullvine
.com. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts. We're
out with new episodes every day. And next time.
Next time we are looking at something that might
make you rethink your entire bleeding strategy.
But we'll save that for later. Thanks for listening.