EDMONTON – New research has found that calves that were weaned and
vaccinated at least two weeks before being transported long distances
had higher shrink and lower average daily gain than calves that had
never been handled.
Karen Schwarztkopf-Genswein, a beef animal welfare and behaviour
specialist at Alberta Agriculture’s research centre in Lethbridge,
Alta., said preconditioned animals that were hauled 15 hours in a truck
had 23 percent shrink compared to 7.7 percent shrink in
non-preconditioned calves hauled the same distance.
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“We were very surprised in our findings,” she said.
Before the study, farmers and researchers believed preconditioned
animals would have less shrink and would recover their body condition
faster than animals that weren’t pre-conditioned.
“The combination of a two-week precondition and long haul turned out to
be not good for the animals,” she told the Alberta Farm Animal Care
annual meeting.
The study was partly funded by AFAC to see what effect preconditioning
had on calves when they were transported short and long distances, and
to find the best combination of preconditioning and transportation
scenarios to produce the least stress.
The study divided 174 calves into two groups. Half were preconditioned
and half were not. The preconditioned calves were vaccinated 30 days
before leaving the One-Four Ranch in southern Alberta and weaned 14
days before.
The other group was vaccinated when arriving at the research station
and weaned the day they were shipped.
Half of the calves from each group were taken on a three-hour truck
ride to simulate a short haul, while the other half went on a 15-hour
truck ride to simulate a long-haul trip.
The non-preconditioned calves were also left 24 hours in a feedlot pen
with only water after the trip to simulate an overnight stay in an
auction market sale. The next day they were taken on another three-hour
trip to simulate a short haul from the auction market.
Once at the Lethbridge research centre, the calves were weighed and
monitored for 30 days. In the first 24 hours, the preconditioned
long-haul calves drank 66 percent more water than the
non-preconditioned calves.
“It seems like preconditioning might not be the way to manage animals,”
Sch-warztkopf-Genswein said.
Researchers believe that double handling the animals before shipping
may create more stress for the calves than separating them from the
cows just before transport. An infrared thermography camera that takes
the surface temperature of the area around the eye found that the
preconditioned calves had a significantly higher temperature, which
researchers believe shows the calves were already stressed from the
weaning and vaccinating.
“Those calves suffered a double whammy close to each other,” she said.
During the 30 days that the animals were studied, the preconditioned
long-haul calves also had the lowest average daily gain. They gained
only one kilogram per day compared to 1.3 kg a day in the
non-preconditioned long-haul calves and preconditioned short haul
calves, and 1.4 kg a day for the non-preconditioned short-haul calves.
Schwartzkopf-Genswein will continue to study the possibility that
weaning two weeks before transport may be too short a time to get
preconditioning benefits. She will continue to juggle the way animals
are preconditioned and the length of time before they are transported
to come up with an ideal scenario that causes the least stress on
calves.
“We want to build best management strategies. What is the best time to
wean?”
