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good morning thank you for joining us today for this month's University of Wisconsin division of extensions Badger da Insight a monthly webinar series offered on the third Tuesday of each month Badger Dairy Insight provides the latest research Dairy based information to improve Animal Welfare breeding and genetic selection automated Automation and modernization and nutrition decisions for Producers Dairy workers and managers and agriculture professionals my name is Erica beom Regional Dairy educator for brown door


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and Kiwani counties and I will be your host today we hope to provide you this opportunity for additional discussion on today's topic since this is a webinar format please add any questions or comments in the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen as this webinar is being recorded we will send you a link to the recorded webinar within a week in hopes of sharing it with others you work with our speaker today is Dr Katie Kramer she is an assistant professor in the department of animal Sciences at Colorado State


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University and has been on the faculty since 2019 Dr Kramer received her Ms and PhD in Dairy science from the University of Wisconsin Madison where she focused on Dairy calf Health welfare and behavior the overall goal of Dr Kramer's current research program is to identify effective solutions that improve human and animal well-being in livestock operations her recent projects regarding calf Health have investigated strategies to prevent disease and calves and provide valuable information about Dairy


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Cav's condition before and after transport in the Western United States she enjoys productive collaborations with dairy stakeholders students and colleagues to co-create solutions that help dairy cattle and the people who care for them so with that I will hand it over to Dr Kramer thanks Erica hi everyone it's um great to be with you today and I'll be talking about Dairy calf transport today and so um I really want us to be thinking about how we can prepare calves for the road ahead so we'll talk um kind of about


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four different areas today first first is get us thinking about why we should care about calf Transportation the second is how do early life transport and Perry transport just meaning the time around Transportation how does our management of those times affect Cales how can we minimize Transportation stress for Cavs and then what do we need to consider about the supply chain so approximately 9.5 million calvs are born in mannually in the US and we can kind of think of these in two different buckets um replacement calves


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and non- Replacements um for our replacement heers we know that approximately um 40% of those are raised offsite and the data that we have suggests that they're transported at about 3 days of age and 15% of operations transport replacement calves more than 50 miles and typically what we see is that um these Replacements are going from the dairy they're transported and they go directly to their destination in most cases for our non-replacement calves these can be male um you know our male our bull Dairy calves or our beef on


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Dairy and those bull calves have historically had low value although we know um recently prices have been really high for those animals and because of that historical low man uh low value we've sometimes seen that these calves are managed a little bit differently but again I think we're starting to see that change which is really positive um and then beef on Dairy which really has just been increasing in popularity across the US for this group of calves there's pretty limited data but we do know that


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most of those animals in the US are transported off the dairy at less than a week of age um some data we have from the Western us is showing that over 60% of them are transported at less than 24 hours of age and they're going an average distance of 140 miles but that can range and we can have them closer um you know closer location to the dairy or um you know across the US really and many times what we see with these non replacement is that um they're going to have multiple transport events before they get to their final


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destination so from the dairy farm they're transported maybe to an auction facility um a a calf dealer Etc and then they're transported again to their final destination and sometimes they might go through one two three or four um transportation events before they get to their final destination so from the audience um I'd really like to know what are your goals for your calf program so I want us to take a step back here and think about overall what are our goals for our calf program and um what are the goals for the calves


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that you sell and so if you can pop those in the chat you might just give people a couple of minutes to kind of think about that and you can kind of uh maybe move to the next slide and then if somebody does put something in we'll make sure that we we bring that up if that's okay sure yeah that's totally fine and so then I want us to also think about what gets in the way of achieving these goals and so most of the time you know if we think about our replacement huffers um that's going to be we want


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them to live a productive life to go on to enter the milk herd um and and be productive in in that way um we want often our calves to remain healthy to grow well um and that really should include thinking about the goals of calves even if they leave our Dairy so how do we set them up for Success on our Dairy um to be healthy productive animals down the road and so thinking about those goals um I'm going to show some data today that um really demonstrates that transportation is stressful for young


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calves um and when young calves get stressed they become more susceptible to disease and disease decreases animal performance and we'll talk a little bit about that so early life Transportation can be a bottleneck to success in calf raising so it's this early life event that maybe happens once or twice early in their life um but really I want us to think about that that uh event can be stressful and how can we change our management so that we can really set them up for Success so as I mentioned at the


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beginning we're really transporting calves less than a week of age and often less than 24 hours of age so um those are neonates right and those young animals are really susceptible to stress and disease right anyone who's raising calves right now knows that right those little um babies are are tough to care for sometimes and we really have to make sure we do everything right to really set them up for success and transportation is no different so there's a lot of information on this slide but really


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what I want you to notice um and take away from this is that calves have underdeveloped immune systems and underdeveloped physiologic stress responses so they can't respond to disease or stress um in the same way that older animals can and so it affects them a little bit more and really what I want you to notice is that um this is the age of the calf right here along that arrow and maternal antibodies so those antibodies that they're getting from colostrum really don't Peak until about 3 or 4 days of Life often we're


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transporting them before that so they haven't even had a chance um for those maternal antibodies to really Peak and be the most effective also um those young calves as many of you probably know they're really susceptible to um cold stress or heat stress and so thinking about that on a day like today um you know how's it going to affect that calf if we put um a a day old calf on a trailer um when it's really cold outside so just keeping in mind that you know we're dealing with a unique animal here we know transportation is stressful


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for adult animals um but it's really hard on these young young calves so why should we care about calf transport um you know transportation we all probably think of that as like um a stressful event for most animals we know that there's co-mingling so they might be on a trailer with other animals extreme weather conditions um if the person handling them isn't trained properly they can experience improper handling for calves especially if there's a lack of bedding or if they're they might be exposed to um addition add pathogens and


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often times what we see with calves is that they don't have access to milk or water on the trailer and often times they don't have access to milk during marketing um either and so what that really means for the calf is that they can become dehydrated they might experience discomfort disease their energy stores are depleted right they don't have the same type of energy stores um that an older animal has and so if they're off of feed for um a longer period of time they can really um that can really


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negatively affect them they might experience fear hunger injury um thermal stress like we talked about and thirst and so all of those um are are types of stressors that they experience right and so we know that stress can increase susceptibility to disease right we know if um something happens how we're uh mixing up milk for a week or so we're probably going to see the effect of that um in a couple weeks when those calves get sick from that you know if they were stressed or um a really cold snap and


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then you know how do those calves recover afterwards and so when we think about Transportation stress those animals are experiencing thermal stress nutritional stress and they're also co-mingled with other animals and so all of those really can make them more susceptible to disease and I think here's when we're thinking about a productive calf and how we make them uh you know ultimately be um successful in the milking herd or if they're going to meet really it comes down to early life growth and we know


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that disease impacts average daily gain and depending on the study and the disease there's an average daily gain loss of anywhere from 01 to 1.7 pounds per day and for our replacement heffers pre-weaned average daily gain affects their future milk production so for every one pound of pre-weaned average daily gain um first lactation mil milk yield increases by 1,200 lb so if we have a calf that's sick and is losing weight um we know that they're going to lose just right off the bat um $255 based on the current price of milk


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in their first lactation when we think about our animals going to to beef um calf Hood disease and poor growth is associated with reduced carcass quality reduced hot carcass weight lower price ad auction um they also might require additional treatments an increased age at first cing labor costs mortality and treatment costs so again if we take a step back and we think about our goals for our calf program which is that we want a healthy productive um animal whether they're going to make milk or going to


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beef and we know that early life stress can impact that um and make them more susceptible to disease so hopefully you you've kind of seen now that early life transportation is stressful it can make them more susceptible to disease and it can reduce performance and if we don't manage this properly it can really be a bottleneck to success in our calf raising programs so I'm going to talk a little bit bit more um about some of the data we have at each stage of the transport process and really it starts out on the


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dairy farm before they get on that trailer and preparing them for transport so colostrum practices on the source Dairy are going to vary as I mentioned previously those male Dairy calves that have historically had lower value um they're more likely to receive contaminated colostrum delayed colostrum feedings lower total volume of colostrum and anywhere um in Canada they found that approximately 12% of calves had failed transfer of passive immunity so they didn't get um good quality colostrum enough of it or


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at the right time and similarly in the US we found about um 23% of those calves had failed transfer of passive immunity so colostrum is really something we can do at the source da and if we get that right we're automatically um you know beginning to set them up for Success so this is a survey that we recently did um and Jackie and Erica and UW extension really helped us with this and so we um surveyed Dairy Producers and we asked them about different practices prior to transportation and we broke it out by


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replacement huffers beef on Dairy and dairy bull Cals and so this is showing that um you know which percent of operations or or how many operations rather um provided colostrum at each time interval and so you can see that really the majority of operations for all calf classes uh were less than 2 hours which really you know we we think of that as being the the the standard is getting colostrum into those calves early but we did see um that more operations fed colostrum to Replacements earlier than non- Replacements and so


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that did differ based on calf class a little bit so this is looking at colostrum quantity by calf class and again I think it's really positive that you can see that the majority of operations are giving at least four quarts of colostrum before that calf um gets on the trailer and we didn't see a difference in quantity either so whether they were a replacement Huffer a dairy bowl or a bol calf um they got similar quantities of colostrum across operations so then we asked about preconditioning and I you know


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preconditioning is often a term used in beef cattle and thinking about how do we prepare them for their next phase of um of their life but I really think we can think about preconditioning in our young Dairy calves and thinking about what are some practices we can Implement at the dairy before that calf gets on the trailer that really helped set them up for success and the data is super limited right now um but this again is that survey data showing what are operations doing so less than 30% of operations are


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feeding some sort of electrolyte prior to the calf getting on the trailer um over 80% whether there they were replacement huffers beef onery or bull Cavs were doing Naval dipping less than 30% % did some sort of supplement and depending on um calf class anywhere from 25 to um 60% of those calves received vaccines prior to getting on the trailer but um so we can think about okay how do we um Implement some management practices that set that calf up for success but what um is often talked about in adult cattle is Fitness for


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transport and so is that animal going to be able to withstand that Transportation withstand that Journey without compromising their welfare and I think we need to think about that in these young Cals too about what condition we're shipping them in so this is a separate study from Canada and they looked at um the health of calves prior to sh shipping and they found that almost 40% of calves had at least one Health abnormality so things like diarrhea Naval inflammation um poor body condition Etc and the


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median the average age of calves in this study was about 5 days of age some data we collected here in the western us um showed that about half of calves had at least one Health abnormality the most calves were um less than 24 hours of age but they were up to 3 days of age and so we saw things like again um Naval inflammation diarrhea um labor breathing things like that and so I as we think about setting the animal up for Success it not only includes management practices at the source Dairy but it


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also makes includes s um making sure that we're not shipping compromised calves or calves in poor condition so back to our survey that we did um that UW helped us with so this includes um Wisconsin herds and this is all states across the US this is looking at the proportion of dairies that would transport calves with these conditions so um for diarrhea 20 20 to 30% of operations said they would transport calves with diarrhea between 20 and 35% said they would transport calves with dehydration 30 to about 55% said Naval


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inflammation they would still ship a calf and um 30 to 40% said that they would ship a calf if they've not received um they ship a calf that has not received the minimum feeding of Cl Ostrom and this is the Wisconsin herds so same study just Wisconsin herds um anywhere from 5% to less than 30% um would ship calves with diarrhea 20 to 35% with dehydration 40 to 55% with Naval inflammation and 40 to 50% um with ship a calf if they've not received the minimum feeding of colostrums so um this is a I think Wisconsin overall is a


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little bit lower than National and so I think that's you know a positive direction and we can keep working um to to ensure we're not shipping calves in suboptimal conditions when we're shipping those calves um you know compromised calves so sick or injured calves it really puts them at a greater risk for poor welfare those stressors that we talked about earlier that are associated with Transportation those are going to be worse in an animal that's in poor condition um and disease conditions can


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worsen as well throughout their Journey especially when you think about those calves that might not be going directly to their destination but they might be transported to an auction facility or a calf dealer um and they might go through through uh one two or three transport events before they get to their destination so when um some studies in Canada have looked at kind of longer term impacts and so they measured the health of the calves at the dairy before they got on the truck and then they looked at how those animals


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performed at the calf Razer and so if a c had a naval infection at the source Dairy they were almost three times more likely to be treated for diarrhea at the calf Razer if they were dull or depressed at the dairy before getting on that trailer they were 2.5 times more likely to die at the calf Razer so we're really seeing some impacts that if we put a calf um who's not healthy on that trailer we're seeing those um consequences at the calf Razer so again I keep going back to this um th this concept but I really think


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it's critical for us to think about yes transport is um you it doesn't happen multip typically doesn't happen multiple times over an animal's life and they're going to have a couple events when they're younger um but it can be stressful for those animals um making them more susceptible to disease and reducing that performance that's so important in our calf raising pro programs so um we've talked about what happens at the dairy now what happens during transport for those calves when we think of the different


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characteristics of Transport for calves typically we're withholding milk or water they might experience improper handling if there's um you know the people who are transporting them haven't been um trained properly there might be a lack of bedding we know that Cals um when they're transported they're going to spend the majority of their time laying down on that trailer they might be exposed to pathogens they are going to be coal mingled and extreme weather conditions and so all of those can lead


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to things like energy dep hypoglycemia or low blood sugar um stress fear discomfort injury um and and dehydration and we saw that um that those can have long-term consequences for those calves as well for marketing um that's an additional stressor for those animals we know that about 70% of male calves are going to go through auctions in the US and they're typic unloaded at a facility that they've never you know it's a new environment lots of new animals there might a variety of different ways that they're handled some


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good some maybe not so good um and they're co-mingled as well so just additional um challenges there and often times they don't have access to uh feed or water as well when we look at the condition of calves um at auctions approximately 20% of calves at auctions in Canada arrived with at least one of the following so they measured Health at the auction when they were getting off the trailer Naval disease was most common they found iron nasal discharge depressed attitude or dull unable or unwilling to rise or stand


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coughing and Joint inflammation so these are animals that were either got on the trailer with bad you know with poor condition or their condition during transport um you know deteriorated and now finally when we look at the condition of calves at their destination um so when they looked at some Bob ve um in the US approximately 96% of them had at least one Health abnormality 80 2% had at least two Health abnormalities um in the western us we looked at non-replacement going to a calf Ranch and over half of those calves


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were dehydrated so this is our survey data again um this includes all states and this is the proportion um but instead of Dairy Producers this is calf raisers so we ask Cal risers what conditions are you seeing as those calves get off the trailer 75% had diarrhea um 65% reported seeing Naval inflammation over half reported um dehydration and difficulty breathing and then we saw they all operations also reported failed transfer of passive immunity respiratory disease bone fractures severe lameness non ulatory


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and thin so this is um again all states and then when we look at that compared to just the Wisconsin herds um we're definitely seeing fewer calf raisers reporting those conditions so the most um frequently reported condition by calf risers just in Wisconsin was difficulty breathing followed by diarrhea Naval inflammation and then similar proportion of operations reported bone fractures dehydration failed transfer passive immunity respiratory disease severe lameness and non-ambulatory so again you know we've got to manage


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those calves properly at the dairy and make sure that we're not shipping animals in compromised um conditions because we are seeing calves arriving to their destination um in suboptimal condition so now I want us to think about um how we can minimize Transportation stress for Cals so we know it's stressful um but right now it's a a reality of our supply chain right so what can we do to make things better for those Cals I'm going to talk about five um the first one is is going to be retaining calves on the source Dairy for longer


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second is focusing on preconditioning third is assessing Fitness for transport fourth is handling calves with care and then the last one is reducing transport duration and events and so some of these might be easier to implement than the other but I think they're all important for us to consider and to discuss as we go forward so keeping calves at the source Dairy for longer basic this just means waiting until they're a little bit older to ship them um there I'm going to talk through a couple studies here that looked at


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different age ranges of calves and so um in Canada they found that compared to Cales who were 2 to six days of age Cals who were over 7 Days of age had greater average daily gain during the first 50 days at a ve facility and reduced incidents of abnormal respiratory score so if they were older when we shipped them they had better average daily gain and less respiratory disease similarly um calves 2 to 6 days of age um compared to 12 to 19 those older animals had a reduced odds of Naval inflammation at the the um ve facility


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in the US we found um in the western us compared to calves less than 24 hours of age calves who were at least one day of age had reduced odds of being dehydrated prior to transport and in fact we found that just one more day at the source Dairy reduced the odds of dehydration by five times so if we can keep them at least past that 24-hour mark the data that we have so far suggests that that's beneficial for the calf and now focusing on preconditioning so again what management practices can we do that really set that calf up for


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Success first and foremost it's colostrum um good quality colostrum in a timely manner um and making sure that we're giving that to all calves including our including the calves that are leaving the dairy the other thing for preconditioning is Naval disinfection so I told you that um calves are going to spend the majority of their time on the trailer laying down and they might also be exposed to pathogens and so when those calves um you know when their navels are not fully healed it can really act as a wick and take up any um


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you know bacteria that are in the environment and they can go straight to the liver the bladder and cause some um really systemic issues for that calf so making sure that we have disinfected those navels and that we have a really clean environment for those calves next is milk and um water so milk is going to be really what we know so far is really going to be the best thing to prepare calves for transport and so if we can get make sure that they have access to milk before transportation and especially if you can


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get them a milk feeding as close to transport as possible that's going to be ideal for maintaining their hydration um their electrolytes and also um making sure that they are not hungry and they don't have um challenge with um energy balance also um providing some sort of at least access to water um during marketing especially can be beneficial for these cabs as well the third thing and I think this is really critical is to assess Fitness for transport we've put a lot of um you know effort into doing this for for adult


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cows and rightfully so um but we really need to be doing the same thing in our calves as well so we know calves are well prepared for transport when they receive highquality colostrum in a timely manner when they get navels disinfected when they have access to milk and water when they're older and um conversely calves with any abnormal health conditions are not not fit for transport and we should not put them on the trailer so if a calf is dehydrated if they're showing signs of illness or injury if they're lethargic


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or depressed if they have Naval swelling if they're unable to stand on their own those are really those calves that we should not be shipping and we should um you know provide them proper care immediately next is handling calves with care um calves are not not cows obviously and so they're they can be kind of difficult to get loaded um so go slow and be patient be gentle um and consider time of day and season so if it's really hot outside can we try shipping them during cooler parts of the day similarly you know the


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opposite for winter can we try shipping them during the warmer part of the day um if we want to make also make sure that they have CLE plenty of clean and dry bedding um that is going to help them maintain their warmth and then if it's really cold um can we do something like a calf jacket to give them a little bit extra um energy excuse me a little bit extra uh warmth during those really cold days and finally um this one's probably with our current supply chain one of the more difficult ones to implement but


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it's really important for us to consider so and that is reducing the transport duration and the events so um one thing I think is important to note is that just because maybe the calf razor is um 30 mil away doesn't mean that it's going to that calf is going to go straight there so they might um pick up multiple other Cales on the route and so that calf might be on that trailer for 8 hours even though the the calf Ranch is only 30 mil away um so just keep that in mind one study looked at transporting


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calves 16 hours versus 6 hours and those animals who were transported for longer had higher levels of dehydration greater body weight loss and an increased incidence of diarrhea after transport so we really saw that duration of Transport be longlasting a New Zealand study found that for each additional hour in transit the odds of mortality increased by 1.5 times so as I mentioned just keep in mind distance doesn't necessarily correlate to duration um also can we think about shipping these calves direct to their


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destination rather than going through auction facilities or calf dealers and are there options closer to the dairy farm that we can consider what about arrest period um so this this study recently looked at this this again was in Canada and they looked at um two different groups of Cals one who spent 16 hours in transit and the other who did um eight hours in transit an 8 hour rest period with two milk feedings and 8 hours in transit and these were 9 to 10 day old Cales and they found that calves that received a


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that had the rest period and milk um maintained energy and had higher growth but they spent more time lying the next day and the authors thought this might be due to uh fatigue and so really we don't have very good data right now to say if if a cal if a rest period is beneficial for young Cales but if we really set them up for success and think about some of those other things I mentioned um that's going to go a long way to helping these calvs so what do we need to consider about the supply chain


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so the calf procurement model so how we buy and sell calvs is challenging right and I think we see this with adult cattle too um but really it's about accountability throughout the supply chain how can we build that in and how can we make sure that it each stage of this calf's um you know transport Journey that they're well cared for and that we're setting them up for Success there's also I think a bit of a disconnect in the supply chain so on the on our survey that we did of dairy producer and calf raisers we asked them


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would you so we asked Dair producers would you add additional preconditioning practices and we asked calf raisers would you require additional PR preconditioning practices so 80 over 80% of daies and over 80% of calf raisers said yeah they would either add or require additional preconditioning practices and then we asked what's the minimum premium um that you would need to to um to implement those changes and dairy producer said we'd need a minimum of $10 ahead to implement that and calf raiser


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said we'd be willing to pay um up to $5 per head so I think there's just a little bit of a disconnect there and I think um that's not unique to to Cavs or to D the dairy industry either either we also asked producers um their about their challenges relative to calf transport the top three um challenges named by dairies were labor costs when calf prices are low and space availability for Cales if transport is delayed for calf razors they said um their biggest challenge was calf Health on arrival the


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distance from dairies and then um calf health challenges during the milk feeding phase so what opportunities are there to improve this procurement model so I think we can Implement management changes that can incrementally improve calf welfare so focusing on um all those things that we we talked about and we can also think about adding some accountability in throughout the supply chain and then EXP exploring strategies to increase the value of calves right now calf prices are really high um and


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that is good um but it's challenging when calf prices are low if you're selling those calves and we can also continue to investigate strategies to mitigate stressors during All Phases so we really need to better understand what's really beneficial for Cavs as well as what's practical to implement and so CC QA or calf Care Quality Assurance um is one program that is uh you know sought to fill the gap of a farm program that you for calf risers or calf ranches CC QA now covers that um but other countries um for example


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Canadian cattle transport regulations um they have specific requirements for transporting calves and so um for example a young ruminant um so that's a calf that's on milk they can't be transported longer than 12 hours um if Cales are less than 8 days of age they have to be loaded and unloaded individually have ample space to lie down they have to be segregated from animals that are older than 8 days of age not trans transported to an assembly Center so they can't go through auction markets or assembly yards they can't be


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reloaded after they've been unloaded at their final destination and the start of loading to end of loading must be less than 12 hours so really other countries have recognized that this is a a challenge when we're transporting these young animals and so they've created some additional regulations um because of that so I think where We Go From Here I think we have to really increase communication among the supply chain sectors so um calf ranches or calf raisers giving feedback to Source dairies about how their calves


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performed implementing some training programs about Fitness for transport particularly and caring for calves before during and after transport and really thinking about how we can optimize how we manage calves before during and after transport so again if we really want our calves to reach optimal success whether that's entering the milking herd or entering the beef supply chain we've really got to think about minimizing early life stress and that includes um minimizing Transportation stress so I'll just give a shout out to


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my graduate student who did the the the survey data that I talked about Erica mauka and then all of the folks at U extension including Jackie and Erica for helping collect this data Tina Coleman Faith Reyes um my collaborators um as well and so I am happy to take questions I don't see any questions in the Q&A but I wrote some questions down for you um what priorities do you see you went over it a little bit here right at the end but you know as a researcher someone who's been studying this for a long time


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what priorities do you see that farmers should try to implement it as soon as they can if they're seeing trouble with their Calves if they're going to the calf Ranch and not doing very well where can they make changes today if they needed to yeah I think that's a great question I think first and foremost um not shipping calves who are sick or injured so if that calf isn't um vigorous and healthy don't put it on the trailer um second would be really preparing those calves for transport so good colostrum getting them a milk


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feeding as close to transport as possible I think those are um some really basic things that we can do right away all right just like with the cows the just not looking like it needs to go on there have a checklist on your farm and go over those checklists and make sure that animal is fit before it gets on a on a trailer absolutely yes another question I was thinking about is marketing so me personally I used to work in a packing plant I was in the receiving Barn I watched a lot of cattle this was 20 some years ago watch cattle


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get off the trailers and they were in terrible shape and fortunately for whatever you know for various reasons that industry has really cleaned up their attitude when it comes to animals unloading at a packing plant animals that got on a trailer that shouldn't have been on a trailer and didn't make it to the packing plant alive do you see any kind of changes that drastic or anything like that with sail Barns and caves being received into sale barns is this something that could potentially be in our


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future I think maybe it's in the future um I think really it's probably going to come down to each sector of the supply chain really taking ownership and responsibility and I think we've we've seen that in adult cattle too um but you know there is data that shows that calvs who are in poor condition are going to bring lower auction prices and so if we want to talk about the the bottom dollar um you know making sure that we put a healthy vigorous calf on that trailer is really going to be the best


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thing that we can do um and so I think I don't know if I foresee any you know strict regulations but I think it's probably going to come down to each sector taking some ownership and then if um there are perhaps disincentives for shipping compromised Cals yep uh one other thing is I know there were some questions on that survey uh for haulers specifically are there any kinds uh or any kind of takeaway messages that you got from haulers regarding that do they do training with their drivers um you know are there


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certain sectors of the hauling industry that are better at hauling calves than others or what what did you see out of that yeah that's a great question so I think we did see that um training programs really varied across haulers and so there were some haulers that reported having you know pretty robust training and some that reported having not very much training and so I think just like we've kind of done some like bqa bat for transport for beef quality assurance in adult cattle I think we can really begin to to use some


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of those existing programs and add on some information for Cavs as well and um you know most haulers were picking up from multiple operations and uh before they went to their final destination and um we also saw a pretty wide range of distance so some were going you know total of 50 miles and others were going hundreds of miles so a wide range there as well and just knowing kind of the dynamic in Wisconsin about hauling little calvs we know a lot of them are are heading out to you out to your area


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and that's you know thousands of miles and uh what's the the best strategy for putting those babies on a trailer and you know you obviously want to put that vigorous calf on the trailer but what else do you recommend especially in temperatures like this jackets on those Cales every single calf feeding right before they leave or how often yeah yeah that's a great question um I think there's so all of those things we talked about I think making sure they're first and foremost in good condition if they're not in good


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condition today when I put them on the trailer they're not going to be in good condition 20 hours from now um and second is if we can get them a good milk feeding um you know that that fills their belly and gives them the energy they need for that time that's ideal if it's cold like today making sure they have plenty of deep clean straw bedding in that trailer um that's going to give them some insulation and comfort and I think you know on days like today probably putting calf jackets on them is a is a good idea


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um and then really when they get to that destination having some you know a crew there that's really ready to kind of give them a little bit of TLC as they're getting off that trailer making sure that they get up they eat right away um things like that so I mentioned we really don't have good data to say whether a rest period is a really good thing or a bad thing so I'd say right now the best things that we can do take care of them take good care of them when we at the dairy make sure they're not you know they're that they


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are healthy and vigorous when they put get put on that trailer um and make sure that trailer is comfortable for them and then make sure that when they get to their destination they get some milk in them as soon as possible possible all right well I don't see any other questions do you have anything else you want to add before we sign off for the day I don't think so if anyone has questions you please feel free to email me and thanks for having me all right so our I just hope that everyone enjoyed our webinar today focusing on


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this presentation on fit for transport for CS please join us next month February 18th for data management and digital Tech on Predictive Analytics to optimize farm management decisions oh my goodness that is a mouthful Dr Victor Cabrera and joal D Doria will be our presenters and to register for that uh webinar next month please visit go. whisk.edu badir and additional information or unbiased University Wisconsin based Dairy resources please visit the extension Dairy program at dairy. extension . whisk.edu or find Us online


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at Wisconsin agriculture thank you for joining us today and stay warm