Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Starting Off On the Right Hoof
On this episode we sit down with Dr. Robert VanSaun from Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Andrea Mongini of M&M Veterinary Practice and Ewetopia Dairy in Denair, CA to discuss colostrum management. This is part 1 of a 2 part series on youngstock feeding. Listeners are encouraged to email DairyGoatExtension@iastate.edu with feedback and questions to be addressed to our content experts.
Topics of conversation include options for feeding newborn kids, evaluating colostrum replacers and natural colostrum, heat treatment of goat colostrum, storage recommendations, comparison of bovine quality parameters with caprine.
Helpful Links:
Using a Brix refractometer for colostrum evaluation:
https://extension.psu.edu/colostrum-management-tools-hydrometers-and-refractometers
Assessment of Goat Colostrum Quality and Passive Transfer:
https://extension.psu.edu/colostrum-management-tools-hydrometers-and-refractometers
Heat Treatment of Goat Colostrum:
https://www.extension.iastate.edu/dairyteam/files/page/files/DairyGoatColostrumManagementFactsheet.pdf
Colostrum Management for Commercial Goat Production:
https://ontariogoat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Colostrum-Management-Book-LR.pdf
Tube Feeding Goat Kids:
https://extension.wsu.edu/wam/tube-feeding-neonatal-small-ruminants-an-essential-skill-for-sheep-and-goat-farmers/
Basic Small Ruminant Nutrition:
https://bovine-ojs-tamu.tdl.org/bovine/index.php/AABP/article/view/3553
This podcast is sponsored by the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners as well as USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program, Antimicrobial Resistance grant # 2020-04197.
Questions or comments about today's episode can be directed to DairyGoatExtension@iastate.edu
Hello, I'm Dr. Michelle Buckley from Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Thanks so much for joining us on Baas and Bleats, sponsored by the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners. Just a quick note before we get started, this work is also supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program, Antimicrobial Resistance Grant No. 2020-04197, which funds my research on improving antibiotic stewardship in dairy goats to assure food safety and milk quality. As always, if you have any questions about any of our episodes, please email them to dairygoatextension at iastate.edu. I hope you enjoyed today's show. Thanks for joining us today on season one of Boz and Bleats, the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners Podcast. This season we're focusing on improving milk quality and food safety in dairy goats. Today's guests are Dr. Robert Van Son from Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Andrea Mongini of M&M Veterinary Service and Utopia Dairy. Today's topic is starting off on the right hoof, and we're going to be talking about feeding goat kids. So let's start with some introductions. Dr. Van Saun, you're new to the podcast, so we're going to start with you. Can you give us a little information as far as your career background and your interest in young stock nutrition for ruminants?
Robert:Sure. Hi, Michelle. Thanks for having us here. Glad to be with Andrea. I'm currently a professor and extension veterinarian with Penn State University, one of our four extension veterinarians. My path to this position has been quite tortuous. I actually started practicing uh in northern New York State where I am right now in a 11-person dairy practice predominantly, and um of course worked with uh all species, but pretty much dairy. From there, I went back to uh the university and completed a residency in therogenology and a master's in nutrition, and got sort of the nutrition bug and also the research bug. So I moved on to Cornell University and did a PhD in ruminant nutrition in the animal science department. From there, I actually went back to Michigan and practiced for another year or so, but missed the academic world, and so I ended up out in uh Oregon State University at the veterinary school there, and that's where I really got involved in small ruminants, uh, did a lot of chameled work, and then also uh a fair amount of sheep and goat work on top of uh the dairy and beef. When I came to uh Penn State, I was focused predominantly on dairy, but we had sort of uh a growing small ruminant population in Pennsylvania. We have actually the second largest auction for sheep and goats in uh New Holland, Pennsylvania, uh second only to um Texas. And so uh Henry and I met through AABP and uh she had that goat herd uh that she asked for some input on, and we ended up collaborating on that goat herd, some nutritional issues, and then developed that into a dairy goat association um research project that we looked at pregnancy toxemia diagnostics as well as colostrum uh evaluation in goats.
Michelle:Awesome.
Robert:So a very robust background, it sounds like.
Michelle:So can you give us a little bit more of an introduction as far as your nutrition background and your experience with feeding um young small ruminants?
Andrea:Sure. Hi Michelle, it's it is great to be back, and I'm looking forward to spending some time talking with Dr. Vanson. He has taught me a lot, and I think together we've sort of broached some new boundaries, which has been really exciting for me. Uh I started in private practice uh 22 years ago, and 12 years ago, I started uh Creamery build their own goat dairy, and then I became very involved with the nutrition and management of that farm, more so than just as a consulting veterinarian. So I think I really got to a place where uh I could do my own on-farm research trials really and watch these kids grow and then turn into milking doughs and follow their progress. And I I really had a lot of I've had a lot of years now to get a system down that's effective and works well and raises quality kids. Uh we also have a sheep dairy, and so I've been able to do the same thing with the dairy sheep. And I think that those two things have been hands-on start to finish, watching, you know, the kids and lambs be born and then grow into milking animals and follow their lifespans, has been really valuable for me in terms of recommendations I can make to other producers. And as Dr. Vanson mentioned, we've done some work together that's really helped me understand more, and it's helped all of us, I think, to gain more in the industry. So I'm looking forward to talking about it today. It should be a really fun hour for us.
Michelle:Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to learning from both of you, and I think our listeners are gonna be pretty excited about this episode too. So um, as usual, I want to start with the basics here. Uh, let's talk about what the different options are for feeding newborn goats. And for just the sake of uh keeping this to about an hour podcast today, we're just gonna talk about bottle raising, so colostrum and milk management. So, um, can we talk about uh pros and cons for our different feeding methods and kind of what the different options are for raising goat kids?
Andrea:So, generally on goat dairies, what we're talking about, and I think what we're gonna be uh broaching today, then, is uh how these kids are artificially reared. So, we're on in dairy settings, we're removing the kids either at birth, um, which in my mind would be the ideal scenario. Uh, there are dairies where the kids are left on the dose for 24 hours to receive colostrum in that way up to up to three days. So there's scenarios where kids are on the mothers from one to three days, and there's scenarios where kids are pulled off at shortly after birth, so they're receiving no raw colostrum or milk from the dams. The reason that we're pulling these kids off at birth is because there are many diseases that are spread from the dough, the dam, to the kid. And those are diseases that can affect the health of the kid immediately within a few days of birth. Some diseases are spread that can cause a chronic lifetime infection. And so for the general health and well-being and longevity of these animals in a herd, what we've learned is that we have a lot more control over disease transmission if these and these kids are being removed as soon after birth as possible. So we want to limit the quantity of time that these kids are in the pen, the close-up or kidding pen where those babies are being born. And then we also want to limit the risk of nursing, along with uh even just potential exposure from the mother, uh, you know, pathogens that could even be on her exterior, on the surface of her body that could cause disease to these kids. And so if we're pulling these kids off at birth, ideally what we're doing is then we're feeding either a heat-treated colostrum, which we're going to talk about later, or we're feeding a colostrum replacer, uh, which we will also talk about. But of course, that first milk, the colostrum, is critical to the health and well-being of those future kids.
Robert:And I'll just interject there. Um, you know, I think what we need to think about is like any other ruminant species, or what we typically associate with our dairy cows, colostrum, ingestion of colostrum as quickly as possible soon after birth is the most critical factor in survival and health of the newborn uh ruminant species because of the lack of antibody transfer across the placenta that we see in all our ruminant species. And, you know, as Dr. Mungini had said, I think one of the big problems in our dairy goat industry is if we do leave the kids on mom and the herd hasn't done a good job of uh biosecurity in terms of looking at disease pathogens that they have, especially the caprine arthritis, encephalitis or CAE uh virus, which is easily transmitted through colostrum, uh that's not going to help the herd and the longevity of the animal. And and you know, one of the big concerns, uh, and I'm glad we'll be talking about the pasteurization process because the goat industry recognized the CAE issue and colostrum uh for quite some time, and as a consequence, many of goat producers went to their dairy cow neighbors and got colostrum from dairy cows, and that's what they used to uh give colostrum and get some passive transfer to. Unfortunately, that's probably the reason uh Yoni's disease has been transmitted and brought into the goat industry uh because of the heavy Yonis prevalence that we have in many of our dairy cows. So they they were doing a good thing to try and avoid one disease, and they ended up bringing another disease in, and Yoni's disease in goats is is very different than what we see in cattle and a little more challenging diagnostically.
Michelle:Yeah, that's a really great point. I don't I never really thought about that before, but definitely something we need to be aware of. Um but like you said, pasteurization can can help us solve that issue, and we'll get to that later. Um I think before we move on to colostrum replacer, I'd like to back up and talk about that research that you guys did with um producing quality colostrum and what we can do maybe to take steps to improve our colostrum quality.
Robert:So uh let's kind of think about this. That this was a large goat dairy that uh Andre and I worked with, I think it was 900 uh U or DOE. And sort of as a side project, we were interested in evaluating colostrum quality, documenting colostrum quality in these goats, as well as passive transfer, which of course is the the reason for colostrum. And in reviewing the literature, I found that the literature is one very limited in being able to show or document what the immunoglobulin concentration is in colostrum. So that was one of the primary reasons we did the side project, was just to document this. And in the dairy industry, there's been a lot of studies that have tried to look at the role of nutrition in modifying colostrum quality or IgG concentration, and and most studies really didn't show anything. Uh however, um it seems in our small ruminants, there is a fair amount of work out of uh the UK that's shown energy status, protein status of the pre-partum diet, the gestation diet, does have some pretty significant effects on colostrum quality. Now, a lot of goat people, you know, since if you don't have uh any kind of reference values for colostrum, why measure it, right? So that was another uh motivation for the project. And the other thing is, is of course um we wanted to develop uh an easy method of evaluating colostrum, and and uh we then went to use of the BRICS refractometer, which was uh validated in dairy cattle uh for measuring IgG concentration in colostrum. So um they collected colostrum samples, they uh allowed or fed colostrum at defined amounts in the on this farm, and then we collected blood samples and and were able to look at that. So for comparison, then uh the typical expectation for colostrum IgG concentration in our dairy cows is 50 milligrams per ml or 50 grams per liter. The mean value that we had in our study was 71 grams per liter. Now we had a range on the same farm from 4.2 to 180. So it shows you the tremendous variability in this, even if you look at our mean, our mean was 71 uh plus or minus 36. So, you know, this really double underscores the need for us to evaluate because even though you feed colostrum from the same farm, it may not have that IgG concentration. So that was a big motivation and and a big eye-opener because when I look in the literature, there are studies that show much, much lower IgG concentrations for various goat species. And the other thing that I found to be very interesting, and this is something maybe that Andrew and I will be doing in the future, is I think there's a big difference in IgG concentration between dairy goat breeds and meat goat breeds, and it has to do with volume. And there's a a paper out of uh Switzerland that had a burn that shows um meat breeds have a higher IgG concentration than the dairy breeds. So if we're talking about raising dairy goat kids, we're really at a greater risk, similar to dairy cattle and calves, in having failure of passive transfer.
Michelle:That's so interesting, and it sparked a lot of questions in my mind. I'm sure listeners are having a similar brain explosion right now, but um I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole. I definitely need to go and uh look up that paper. And but my main question is um, with such a large range, especially on goat dairies, I have to imagine the bovine industry was at a similar point a long time ago before we started really evaluating colostrum and selecting um and only feeding high-quality colostrum. So, do you know how was the cutoff for bovine colostrum, like to determine adequacy of IgG? Do you know how that cutoff was developed and is there any way to do that in dairy goats? Am I talking myself into a research project?
Robert:Uh Dr. Judd Heinrichs had uh completed some work where they measured IgG concentrations in uh dairy calves, and what they found was they needed to get to a level of 10 milligrams per ml in serum, and that showed that that was sort of the cutoff in terms of improving um more uh reducing mortality and uh reducing morbidity. So that became the gold standard. Uh just recently, this about a year ago, uh there was a consensus report uh published in the Journal of Dairy Science, and they went back and reviewed all of the literature relative to uh passive transfer, and now they have four levels of passive transfer. If they're less than 10 milligrams per ml, that's considered uh poor or failure. Between 10 and 17.9 is fair, and then uh 18 to 20, I think it's 23, 24, is good, and then uh above 25 is is excellent. And so that's really changed the dynamics of how we interpret because we all kind of lived on this threshold of 10. And what we found in our little study is the average IgG concentration in our goat kids was 15 milligrams per ml, so it was above that 10. But again, we saw quite a range, and so we need to go back. Unfortunately, um, we didn't get all the health data on those. Kids to be able to say, you know, those above certain level. But I think, based on this new consensus report, that we're probably looking at wanting to get above 15 or or more in our Go Kids. That's my guess right now.
Michelle:And of course, higher is always better, right?
Robert:That's right. This is this is one of those cases where more is better.
Michelle:Awesome. Well, that's some really great insight. Um, and like I said, I think we could probably really go way farther down that rabbit hole. Um, Dr. Manjini, did you have any other thoughts on that before we talk about uh colostrum replacer and pasteurization?
Andrea:I think Dr. Vanson did a great job there. But one thing I do want to bring up for producers listening, uh, and it's something that I have found to be true in the goats and also in the sheep, is that uh when Dr. Vanson talked about this wide range of uh basically concentration of antibodies in colostrum and colostrum quality, in goats, you know, we'll routinely have doughs, and producers know this, where the colostrum is really thick. It's I mean they'll describe it as being pudding-like, and maybe there's you know, 150 mils is all that's coming out, you know, a cup, two or three cups is all you're getting out of that dose udder, but then you'll have doughs that produce two gallons of colostrum. And so a lot of the quality issues that we're talking about, you know, that that really concentrated colostrum is going to be thick and very dark and yellow, and the colostrum that looks more milk-like is going to be quite dilute. Um, and so the the key here, and I think we'll talk about this later, but for producers, uh, we need to keep in mind that we want to be milking those doughs and getting the colostrum out of the udder as soon after kitten as possible. So the longer we wait uh to milk that dough, the more milk is going to dilute the colostrum and the colostrum quality.
Michelle:And and we can talk about the pudding is actually probably a better quality colostrum.
Andrea:Obviously, we still need to test it to be sure, but of course, yes, and mastitis is always a rule out for those, but in general, it's not mastitic, it's just that it's very concentrated.
Michelle:Interesting discussion. Um so we might come back to this later, but let's move on to talking about um feeding colostrum replacer. Um, if uh a producer decides to feed colostrum replacer, what should they look for as far as ideal nutrition parameters in a replacer? And um what would be an appropriate backup option? And then can we also talk about some common pitfalls when we're feeding colostrum replacing?
Robert:Okay, so I'll give you some of the research side of things that we did. First of all, uh, I think it's really important to make the distinction that there are two kinds of colostrum products out on the market. There are colostrum supplements and there are colostrum replacers. Right now, I don't know if there's uh as many supplements versus replacers on the small ruminant side, and Andrea might be able to provide more insight on that. I know on the dairy calf side, there's an awful lot of supplement products, and supplement products generally are about 25 grams of IgG total. Uh a replacer generally is going to be upwards of about 100 grams to 150 grams. So the difference is the amount grams of IgG that's in the product. And that's important. In our research, uh, based on the measured IgG concentration of colostrum and the uh defined amount of colostrum that was fed for two feedings on this farm, we delivered 35 grams of IgG to these goat kids on average. And that generated the 15 grams of IgG in the blood for those kids. So if I'm gonna have a goat replacer where I'm not feeding real colostrum, I want to have at least 35 grams of IgG there. Now I think, you know, like I said, the the um calf replacers generally have about 130 grams or 150 grams. So you could actually use one of those and and use that for multiple kids. Um but I think the commercial goat replacers only have like 25 grams, if I remember correctly. So uh and that's because nobody knew how many grams of IgG were necessary.
Michelle:And do we know how well absorbed the bovine IgG is in the GOAT GI tract? Like, is that interchangeable to the necrine IgG, or are there some differences in absorption?
Robert:As far as I know, there's no difference because absorption of immunoglobulins is is basically um a reverse, what's called a reverse pinocytosis uh or pinocytosis process, and it doesn't matter what it is, it it just those those um vacuoles of the small intestine take up anything, bacteria, you know, whatever. So there's no distinction. It's not like they identify bovine IgG or or GOAT IgG, which is why we can use any of this. The the bigger challenge is how long does that iminoglobulin molecule uh last in the blood?
Michelle:Is there a difference in how long it takes to or how long those two products last in the blood? Is there any variation that you're aware of?
Robert:I would only assume that a uh non-species immunoglobulin protein is is probably going to have a shorter half-life than a natural. And the bigger problem is, you know, what why are we giving immunoglobulins? We're protecting against disease. And so the bovine immunoglobulins may not be specific. If we remember, immunoglobulins are specific to a given antigen, and they may not be specific to the appropriate antigen that those uh goat kids are being exposed to.
Michelle:I'm imagining all kinds of research projects coming out of this discussion, just so many questions. Uh but Andrea, what kind of, I guess, real-world insights do you have for us to add to this um research level of insight?
Andrea:Sure. And you're right, Michelle. There's the more you scratch a surface of uh commercial goat dairying and small ruminant dairies, there's just so little research, especially American-based research. And so there's other research that is applicable and crosses over, but a lot of what we do in the United States is different, and uh it we really don't know a lot. But speaking about colostrum replacers, from a producer's standpoint, the things that you know I'm most concerned about are one that again it is bovine origin, and there actually aren't any goat colostrum replacers made from goat milk. So there's no companies making those that I know of, there's no companies making those, so they're actually buying bovine milk and uh utilize just labeling them for goats based on the volume of colostrum they deliver. So if you have a large operation, there's no reason you can't use the bovine origin colostrum replacers. Supplements, as Dr. Vincent commented, a supplement is made to be mixed with colostrum. So we can't give a colostrum supplement by itself or with milk. We need to give a colostrum supplement with colostrum and in a GOAT setting that is of little use. So we're talking about a colostrum replacer as being what we need to use if we have a dough that either doesn't have colostrum, if it's a small farm, you know, if the dam doesn't produce enough to feed the kids, if you have a setting where you have disease or you don't want to deal with heat treatment and the quality control issues there, then you'd be using a colostrum replacer. But again, these are quite expensive. Uh a lot of there is research showing that I'm concerned about that there's a lot of inconsistencies between batches of these colostrum replacers made for the same brand and between brands. And then also that it's bovine origin, and as Dr. Vincent commented, you know, that isn't necessarily protective against what is on that farm. And so the best option that we need to be looking at is heat treating, not pasteurizing, but heat treating colostrum on these farms to get the immunity to the diseases that that farm has, that those goats are exposed to, and that's going to give us much more protection for those kids over their lifetime and over their you know the beginning of their life.
Michelle:Well, that's a great segue into our next point that I wanted to talk about, which is what is the difference between heat treating and pasteurization? And um how would a producer go about accomplishing either of those two? It sounds like you would prefer heat treatment over pasteurization.
Andrea:So heat treatment of colost is what we use for colostrum. So the colostrum is heated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit for 60 minutes, whereas pasteurization we're heating to 175 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. And the difference, the reason those are different is because the colostrum antibodies, those IgGs that Dr. Vanson has talked about, those will be broken down if we get much above 60 degrees. Um as producers, you're gonna know that because you made pudding. So if you've ever made pudding when you tried to, you know, heat treat or pasteurize your colostrum, you you went too hot. So the there's different ways that this can be done. Um for larger operations, you can actually buy commercial units that are one gallon or three-gallon units, and they will actually do this process for you, which is wonderful. If you can't uh afford that cost, or you have a smaller operation, you can essentially use like a double boiler. And what we do is we just pour the colostrum into mason jars, and then you use a double boiler to get those temperatures that need to be achieved. The key is that the producers you have to test the temperature of the colostrum in the jar. You can't test the water temperature to decide that you've achieved the proper temperature. And so if it's for heat treating colostrum, we're talking 140 degrees for 60 minutes, that means that the heat treatment starts when that colostrum is 140 degrees. It doesn't start when the water bath reaches 140 degrees, and that's a really common downfall, and then we have failure of the heat treatment, and we will still see problems with disease in those kids. And so if you're evaluating your pro your your kid program, you the temperature control is really, really important to making sure that you're actually effectively uh killing the pathogens and the bacteria and viruses that could be living in that colostrum.
Robert:The points that you brought up were were very appropriate, and we got to be very careful on time because we can degrade the immunoglobulin uh molecule with heat. It can be broken down. Uh work in the dairy calf side by again uh Sandra Godin at Minnesota and uh uh Jud Heinrichs at Penn State showed with heat-treated colostrum there is a slight reduction in IgG concentration, but for whatever reason there seems to be a greater efficiency of absorption. So this is another project. How many projects have we come up with so far? I would love to do heat treatments in goats and see if the efficiency of absorption uh is better because in our work uh the average efficiency of immunoglobulin absorption was only about 17%, and that's pretty typical. Um usually it's about 20% or so, but the range that we had in our study was from uh about 3% all the way up to 52%. So there's a huge variation there. And I know that they were doing some heat treatments uh of the colostrum on that dairy, and so I don't know if that had some impact versus some of the others where they were using just fresh colostrum on the the bucklings. Uh so uh that's something I think we need to look at. Yeah.
Michelle:Let's talk about storage parameters of uh colostrum once it's been heat treated. Um in I know the dairy goat, uh the dairy calveside, excuse me, um, a lot of times we'll keep frozen colostrum on hand um for various reasons, or you know, we can't always feed fresh colostrum to um to kids like directly out of the heat treatment. So what are your preferred methods of um storing that product and how long can we keep it either refrigerated or frozen?
Andrea:I prefer when we are storing colostrum, we actually freeze it in uh water bottles, plastic water bottles, 16-ounce water bottles. Uh the rule of thumb for feeding kids or lambs is one ounce per pound of body weight is the initial dose. And so if a kid's average eight pounds, then a water bottle will feed two kids. So ideally the kids are being weighed at birth, and then they're either bottle fed or tube-fed, the appropriate amount of colostrum. But that's a nice size volume to freeze effectively. So if we start getting into gallon size or buckets of colostrum, the freezing of that takes so long that we can actually have bacterial growth during the freezing process or in the thawing process. One thing that I I request producers that I work with do is that we culture the colostrum as it comes out of the heat treatment, and then ideally we're culturing it again before it's fed. And this doesn't ideally every batch that's heat treated is cultured, and we do more surveillance and periodically culture thawed colostrum. The colostrum needs to be frozen in a chest freezer, like a deep freeze, rather than a frost-free freezer. So the upright freezer is a refrigerator with a freezer attached to it, those are not ideal for storing colostrum. That the frost-free freezers have a freeze-thaw cycle that actually can contribute to bacterial growth. That said, we don't keep uh colostrum frozen for more than three months. Uh, sometimes we'll keep it for it's dated when it goes in, so we'll keep it for up to six months in case there's something desperate going on, but ideally, we're after three months it's already been utilized or it's being thrown away.
Robert:So we don't see any degradation in the freezing process. Uh, we did with these goat samples from this uh dairy uh fresh samples and then frozen samples, which we thawed and remeasured uh with the BRICS refractometer. And basically uh the association between the BRICS uh analysis in raw versus frozen for the same thing was like 0.999. So the R squared. So basically the same. Uh the work that we've done at Penn State uh with Judd Heydrich and myself uh on freezing colostrum and using colostrum. We prepare and make colostrum and use it over multiple studies uh in calves and have stored colostrum for multiple years and still had the same type of um product. Um so I I think it's fairly stable, but I I certainly think that uh the bacterial contamination is is of big concern and probably would go with uh colostrum that's frozen for a less period of time, as Andrea had suggested.
Michelle:That makes a lot of sense. And Andrea, you kind of touched on um feeding amounts for colostrum. Um can you talk about how many times you're giving colostrum as well? Um and is that a universal thing, or do you kind of keep or recommend keeping maybe smaller produce uh in a separate pen where they can get colostrum um a few more times, or maybe even transition milk a few more times than their uh you know cohorts who are taking off well and um growing effectively right from day one because of the nutritional content, not only the immune support there.
Andrea:Sure. So one thing we didn't mention earlier was that colostrum needs to be milked from these doughs within six hours of kitten. So if we don't get that milk out or the colostrum out in that those first six hours, if you're if the dairy is milking fresh goats twice a day and a goat is say 10 hours from kidding, that colostrum should not be saved as colostrum for kids. It could be saved as kid milk, but it can't be saved as colostrum. So, first we're saying the does need to be milked within six hours of giving birth to have their colostrum be saved and heat treated to feed to kids. Secondly, those kids need to be fed colostrum within an hour of birth, uh, two hours tops. So we can have what's called failure of passive transfer, which is they basically interprets that the kids are not receiving colostrum. Either they had what's called gut closure because it took too long for that colostrum to reach the gut, or the kids were not fed any colostrum or anything, or they were fed milk instead of colostrum. But what we're all of what we're talking about today is trying to achieve passive transfer and avoid failure of passive transfer. So we want these kids to have high-quality colostrum within one to two hours of birth. That said, the dose is one ounce per pound of body weight. And what Michelle really touched on, which is a great point, and all of you with working with goats know, is that you can have a 12-pound single, or you can have quads that weigh four pounds. So these kids have they have different stressors, and they can be some of these kids will be fine. These four and five pounders can grow up to be, you know, fine, healthy, normal doughs, but they do need extra care. What we recommend, what I like to see, is not so much that these small kids Kids have extra colostrum, is that we sort them into pens. So ideally, you know, you're you're gonna be raising these kids in pens of five to ten, you know, when they're newborns, and they need to be sorted into by size, so they're sorted by date by age, so we want all kids within a day or two of birth in the same pen. We don't want two-week-old kids with newborns, and then we also don't want these big 10 and 12-pound kids with the little four and five pounders. One of the main reasons being that they just get smothered, they get laid on under under the heaters, under the heat lamps in the corner. These little kids have a much harder time. They like to huddle up together to sleep and then they'll get laid on, just similar to what would happen with the mother. So the the small kids, I have not seen a benefit, and I have messed with this and tried this on the dairies that I work with. I don't see a benefit to extended colostrum feeding, but I do see a benefit to sorting on size. Now, one thing you mentioned about transition milk. The problem with transition milk, and I've really gotten away from feeding it, and so it's a shame to dump it and lose it, but the transition milk is the milk between that after that first milking, so maybe the say the fourth milking on is going into the bulk tank, and that varies with dairies and creameries, what they'll allow. But there's two to three milkings in there that are considered transition from colostrum to milk. The thing is, if you pasteurize transition milk, you make pudding, and there's questions about heat treating milk and if that's enough to kill the pathogens, if that's effective. And so I have found that it is so difficult to manage that in between that I've just quit we've quit managing it because I don't feel that as a dairy we can do a good job of really understanding what we have.
Michelle:That makes sense with so much variability and the quality of the costrum when it comes out, that it's gonna impact the quality of the transition milk and um just the variation in general is gonna make it really difficult to manage that and yeah.
Andrea:I I really have struggled with that and tried to work out ways of not giving up that milk for a long time and feeding it raw just because it's free is not really free, right? There's so many cost effect associated with feeding raw milk to go kids that it's just we're it's much cheaper just to dump it.
Michelle:Okay. Well, noted then we need to work on our transition milk uh strategies in another project. Um I did want to bounce back to something that you mentioned in that uh last segment, um, talking about gut closure in kids. Do we have a clear understanding of the timeline of that? Like we seem to in in calves, um, or is this maybe yet another project?
Robert:Well, we we do need to confirm, but um I think the gut closure process is is pretty much the same across the species there. So you know we're looking at we we see a very marked uh decline, and even within our little little data set, um we do see there is some time effect on the absorption efficiency. So as as you go later and later, the absorption efficiency drops pretty dramatically.
Michelle:Well, that seems to be the case with pretty much any mammal as well.
Robert:Well, the only I want to add one last thing, and we talked about the BRICS refractometer, you know. I mean we're we're talking about evaluating colostrum, but we haven't talked about how, you know. Um we could use a colostrometer similar to what we use in in um candle, but it's gonna need to be adjusted, of course, for the scale. In our study, we use the BRICS refractometer, and so um if we're looking to achieve the 70 um milligrams per ml, uh the BRICS reading should be up in the 22 to 23 range, okay? Now, that being said, uh some of the dairy people are gonna say, wait a minute, we recommend 2122 for 50 milligrams per ml. That's what the data says. But it seems the relationship is different for different colostrum, and it's probably due to the difference in fat content and the fat globules with goats compared to cattle. So the relationship, the line is not the regression line, is not the same. So that's why we have to come up with specific criteria. And I'm even doing some work with sheep right now, and they're on a different line than what goats are. So we're gonna have BRICS numbers for the different species. You'll have dairy cattle guidelines, goat guidelines, and sheep guidelines.
Michelle:And are those goat guidelines published currently? No, no. All right, well, thank you so much, Dr. Vanson and Dr. Mongini. That is all we have time for today. We're gonna pick this discussion up on our next episode and transition into talking about feeding milk to our goat kids. So, in the meantime, I'd like to make a special request to any and all of our listeners out there to shoot us an email at dairygoatextension at iastate.edu. Let us know where you're listening from, how you became interested in the podcast, your involvement with the dairy goat industry, and any feedback or questions that you might have that haven't been answered so far. We'll be reaching out to some of our experts later in the season to see if we can get some answers to those questions that might not have come up in the original episodes. As always, thanks so much for listening and have a great day.
