While correlation does not always equal causation, when it comes to sanitation and scours, it does!
We have seen it time and time again, lack of sanitation = scours in calves.
The challenging thing is, sanitation isn’t always easy to do. Whether that’s because of cold weather, lack of time, lack of protocols, or thinking you’re cleaning things well when you’re actually not, there are a million ways it can go wrong.
The important thing is that you keep trying until you find a protocol that fits your farm’s needs and ability, and also tracking and monitoring the protocols you choose to make sure there isn’t protocol drift.
One product that we have implemented into our calf barn is DK-ll. We have found over many trials and testing, that this product is by far the easiest, safest, and most effective cleaning product we have found.
From saving money on gloves, we went from one box of gloves every 3 days to 1 box per week feeding 300 calves, which equates to a savings of over 50%, because we use our drop lines that are found around our barns to clean our hands instead of changing gloves.
We can easily and safely spray buckets down between feedings with DK-ll and know that they are getting a significant reduction on the ATP meter, and not have to worry about rinsing them off.
We can spray down pens with calves in them, knowing that we aren’t going to cause damage to their skin or lungs by spraying DK-ll near them.
The list goes on. These are a few of our favorite ways to implement DK-ll in our barn, but how can you implement DK-ll in your calf program?
While we don’t have bedding in our baby barns, there is still a great opportunity to utilize this product in your calf barn that does have bedding.
For example, the fronts and backside of the front panel of Calf-Tel pens get pretty dirty with milk, grain, and organic matter throughout the calf’s 8-10 weeks in the pen. DK-ll would be a great in between feedings/weekly spray to apply to the fronts of your calf pens to keep them clean and free of bacteria, and help reduce the flies in the summer!
This can also be applied directly on top of bedding to help reduce bacterial loads in individual pens as well as group pens. Even if a calf is individually housed, she can still get scours, and the cleaner you can keep her pen, the faster she can recover. If there is manure on the panels of her pen, she can easily ingest manure, which will of course not help her get healthy any faster.
While these are very small and easy applications, the little things in calf raising add up to the big things, and these little things can go a long way!
If you are interested in adding DK-ll to your calf program, send us a message, we would love to connect you!