Strategies to reduce the incidence of disease and subsequent usage of antibiotics in dairy cattle are highly desirable. One strategy that warrants additional research is the prolonged feeding of colostrum during the early pre-weaning phase of life. Although feeding maternal colostrum or a colostrum replacer on day one of life to help calves achieve passive transfer of immunity is a common practice, feeding it following day one as a supplement is not. Feeding a whey-based colostrum replacer product to calves for 2 wk after birth, in this study, reduced antibiotic treatments for diarrhea and death loss in pre-weaned dairy calves while also improving animal performance. Therefore, prolonged feeding of colostrum using a whey-based product may be a viable practice to improve calf health and performance while reducing antibiotic use.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.