Nutritional counseling – hypocalcemia

We audit the current feeding and health status of dairy cows, but also the production and storage of roughage.

In autumn, we visited the farm of Ania and Michał Krajewski in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. The Krajewski’s run a farm with a dairy cattle production profile. On a daily basis, they cooperate with Tomasz Kaliszewski and Daniel Marchelewski from the Agrocentrum Group. We got to know the breeders better in our series Close to the Breeder.

Breeders are open to cooperation and welcome nutritional advice. They take part in joint experiments. A regular nutrition service for dairy cattle helps optimise production costs. Tomasz Kaliszewski performs on-farm analyses on feed and faecal screens, urine pH control and roughage analyses as required.

On the Krajewski farm, when analyzing lactation curves (available in the herd management system), we noticed a decrease in lactation persistence around 2-3 weeks, says Tomasz Kaliszewski manager of nutrition and prevention.

In the group of dairy cows preparing for lactation, we introduced the VitAgro Preparation product, which contains encapsulated anionic salts in its formulation.

The anionic salts contained in VitAgro Preparation lower the pH of the urine, which we regularly monitored to determine the appropriate dose of the premix, Tomasz Kaliszewski stresses. Lowering the urine pH during this period causes the secretion of parathormone, which mobilizes the body to resorb Ca from the bone. This mechanism ensures adequate Ca concentration in the blood, thus preventing hypocalcemia.

Hypocalcemia – a metabolic disease

Hypocalcemia is one of the metabolic diseases of dairy cows of the postpartum period. In its clinical form, it occurs most often on the first postpartum day and affects 6 to 13%.

Dairy cows are observed lying down with a characteristic side-to-side and backward position of the head, sigmoid curvature of the spine, loss of consciousness, decreased body temperature and flaccidity of the udder.

Hypocalcemia in its clinical form (also known as milk fever) is caused by a drop in blood Ca concentration below 1.25 mmol/L. In high-yielding dairy cows, a drop in blood concentration below 2 mmol/l causes the subclinical form, which affects up to 50% of cows in the herd.

The disease reduces the ability of striated and smooth muscles to contract (muscle atonia), which can lead to:

• bearing stops
• displacements of the digestive tract
• slower closing of the teat sphincter (mastitis)
• a more difficult birth
• decrease in rumen motility (lower feed intake)
• ketosis
• liver steatosis.