Did you milk her for all she’s worth?” With due respect to my mentor and colleague, Don Sanders, who wrote a book by this title, I suggest that we leave a little gas in the tank for our retiring cows to contribute to their next career as beef cows.

All dairy cows become beef cows. The difference between an 1,800-pound market cow bringing 90 cents a pound and a 1,000-pound cull that is totally spent bringing a few hundred dollars can be as much profit as most cows make in a lactation. The idea is to sell next month’s mandatory culls this month for a lot more money and less distress for the cows.

Practicing veterinarians have gotten into market cow facilities like never before, performing inspections for shipment due to influenza. What we have seen has been enlightening.

Farms have a signature kind of cow they send to market. Some farms do a great job of marketing healthy cows in great shape. Other farms have missed that opportunity, and cows are marketed to prevent calling the dead stock truck. Of course, things happen, and every farm has an occasional cow that markets in poor condition.

Four sound feet

Lameness is the most common reason for cows losing body condition, and that is what I saw in the kill pens. Lameness due to injury, such as fractures, splits, and tendon tears, rarely resolve and often result in euthanasia because these animals are unfit to travel.

Injuries have been a frustration of mine. They are direct results of facility design, flooring, and handling technique. I have dairies make a map of where down cows are found. This can shed light on if our facilities are asking cows to do something they can’t.

A scheduled annual review of floors followed by addressing these issues can keep cows upright. Training on handling may need to occur as frequently as milker training to keep all focused on moving cows calmly and effectively.

Other lameness commonly develops over time. If it gets to the point that a cow is losing weight and is unfit to travel, an opportunity has been missed. Hock lesions are almost entirely a function of stall mattresses with insufficient bedding. Antibiotics and ointments don’t resolve them. Treatment involves rest on a bedded pack; prevention is all about bedding.

Regular hoof trimming pre-dry-off and post-peak around 100 days in milk dramatically reduces sole ulcers and white line separations. Left unattended, there are bony changes in the foot that are unresolvable. These cows lose production, then weight, and then viability. Trim cows on a scheduled basis and as needed when they show a score 2 on the lameness scoring chart by Elanco.

The cow pushers can be empowered to make a list of cows needing attention. Realistically, we can take the last 10 cows coming to the holding pen in each group, and 90% of those cows may need some work. Regular attention to foot baths for hairy warts reduces the risk of them becoming chronic and progressing into cellulitis up the leg.

Check the treatments

Treatment failures constitute many of the skinny cows in the kill pen. Often these cows were treated with antibiotics, did not respond, had to wait out the slaughter withhold, and continued to deteriorate.

Many of these cows did not respond to antibiotics because they did not have a condition that would respond to antibiotics. Be careful about turning the treatment crew loose with the antibiotic bottle if they have not been trained in disease diagnosis. Examination and diagnosis should happen before treatment.

Once diagnosed, be sure treatments stay on protocol. We will not make veterinarians out of every treatment crew, but our experience is that there is opportunity in training. We once put a veterinarian on a large farm three mornings a week to diagnose diseases and recommend treatments or salvage. The savings in drugs were double the vet charges and market receipts per cow went up. Hopeless cases were culled. It works every time. Not every treatment works, but the sick pen is a percentage game. Case selection is much of success.

Measure your success

One of the most common treatment failures are left-side displaced abomasums (DA). We have several dairies that value cows where we do DA surgery. On a percentage basis, this is the best repair. Several other dairies operate on a cost savings basis and roll and toggle their cows.

A study many years ago showed veterinarians to be more successful at this technique than herdsmen. I have no issue with farms rolling cows on their own, but I encourage them to track their success rate. We expect our surgery repairs to have a productive cow in the herd a month later 85% to 90% of the time. Well-done toggles will be 10% less. Farms challenged by toggles have had as low as 50% success.

Check your numbers and determine if you need to be retrained or need a different approach. You would hope to not have so many DA cases that you get really good at this technique.

The failures need to be evaluated quickly. Up to two days afterward, you may be able to reroll the cow successfully, or you can market it before the animal loses condition. Peritonitis can be a common result, and these cows will be condemned.

Cows with unrepaired DAs get skinny and eventually weak. Market them before that happens.

Pneumonia cases are treated successfully on some farms but not on others. Vaccination may be valuable in prevention. Follow up by a skilled herdsman on every case is important to prevent market cows from losing value. Some give a little more time to get better, but most cows do not.

We have an opportunity to market better quality cull cows. We also have a responsibility to do so.