Brigade® Helps Cut Stress On Calves At Weaning
Lester Colomb
Lafayette, LA
October, 2001/November, 2001
Stress can kill. Whether you run a cow-calf operation, background or run stockers, it could be your number one enemy. Stress will alter appetites in cattle and inevitably cause major health problems. Controlling stress caused by weaning, shipping, grouping or breeding is essential if an operation is going to show a profit.
Producer Lester Colomb knows that. He faces the problems caused by stressed cattle every day. Colomb operates a 600-head purebred Charolais ranch in near Lafayette, Louisiana. He makes sure his cattle receive clean, fresh water along with high quality forage, grain or silage. But that's often not enough to ward off stress-related problems.
Along with his feeding program, Colomb depends on a supplement - CRYSTALYX® Brigade® - that has demonstrated its effectiveness as a stress-fighter time and time again.
Brigade® is a low-moisture molasses block that has a Stress Fighting Formula fortified with vitamins, minerals and key trace minerals needed by cattle to overcome nutritional stress. It is ideal for cow-calf, backgrounding-stocker and other operations where calves often face all types of stress.
Colomb depends on Brigade® to offset stress-related challenges while reducing the rate of sick calves and generating stronger gains.
"We use Brigade® in our 45-day post-weaning feed program along with hay and our normal dry feed," Colomb said. "Brigade® has helped us attain a zero rate of illness and zero usage of antibiotics. In addition, our dry feed usage was lowered by 30%."
In Colomb's program, Brigade® consumption was three-tenths pound per-head, per-day during this 45-day post-weaning period. The cost was 11-cents per-head, per-day. Heifers have remained on Brigade® 150 days after the post-weaning period with grazing only. In mid-summer Colomb started all dry cows on Brigade® and saw immediate results in body condition, hair coat color and appetite.
"Consumption on Brigade® with the dry cows was one-half pound per-head, per-day," he said. "We went through 35 to 40 days of extreme heat and humidity with no rainfall. But there were no breakouts in anaplasmosis or pneumonia and the cows maintained good body condition."
Cattle trace-mineral deficiency is common
As part of a decade-long series of surveys on U.S. cattle-management practices, researchers from the USDA National Animal Health Monitoring Service drew blood samples from cows in the top 23 cow-calf states. They measured the samples for levels of zinc and copper, two important trace minerals.
The sampling indicated about a 25-percent chance that at least one animal in a beef producer's operation is severely deficient in zinc. About 94% of the sampled operations had a least one animal that was at least moderately deficient.
If a herd has calves with zinc and copper deficiency, there are likely to be lower growth rates, poorer feed efficiency, reduced reproduction and a weaker immune system that leaves calves vulnerable to disease.
That's why Colomb has made Brigade® part of his regular program. For other producers who graze calves, there are numerous research studies that show how Brigade® and other CRYSTALYX® supplements can improve grazing performance and pre-conditioning.
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