Manitoba Agriculture conducts livestock, forage seminars

By Shawn Cabak Manitoba Agriculture

Manitoba Agriculture is offering a series of livestock and forage webinars led by various presenters aimed to help Manitoba beef producers best manage their cattle operations. Find out the latest news on research and production for beef and forage management by participating in these virtual sessions. The February session covered Cattle Marketing and Prepping Your Calves for Sale. You can participate by watching on your computer, smartphone or tablet. All sessions are recorded so they can be watched at a later date.

Register for the StockTalk webinar by going to Manitoba Agriculture’s homepage and clicking on the StockTalk link on the right hand side of the page. Future webinars will take place on: Mar. 9, 2023– Bull Soundness Exam and Bull Buying Tips; Apr. 13, 2023– Forage and Pasture Management. For more information visit: www.manitoba.ca/ agriculture/online-resources/stock-talk.html

Keeping calves healthy

Dr. Reynold Bergen, BCRC Science Director wrote an article that originally appeared in the February 2023 issue of Canadian Cattlemen magazine.

Calving season can be stressful on producers and livestock so it is important to keep both healthy during this time. Since considerable expense and effort goes into wintering and calving cows, we want to get newborn calves off to a strong start at birth. Three leading causes of preweaning death loss are diarrhea, navel ill and bovine respiratory disease (BRD). Not all calf illness and death can be prevented, especially when the weather gets bad, but remembering some basic principles can help avoid some of them.

Dr. John Campbell (Western College of Veterinary Medicine) led a team of researchers and producers from the 2013-18 Western Canadian CowCalf Surveillance Network to study calf diarrhea, navel ill and BRD.

The keys to reducing the risks of these diseases in calves were:

• Social distancing, allowing cattle to spread out and calve on clean ground.

• Not letting germs build up by calving heifers and cows separately and away from winter feeding grounds.

• Not buying more germs by introducing newly purchased cows or calves during calving or before breeding.

• Minimizing stress with less handling

• Strengthening immunity with optimal body condition scoring and vaccinations.

Work with your veterinarian to develop a prevention-based herd health plan tailored to your facilities, landbase, workforce and disease history. Review your vaccination program (calves and cows), and how you usually prevent and treat calfhood diseases when they arise.

Optimal nutrition ensures cows and heifers are in good body condition score at calving, give birth to a healthy calf and produce high quality colostrum. This will also help cows rebreed sooner after calving. Allow newborn calves to get their fill of colostrum before tagging, vaccinating or castrating them.

Soybean and pea production

A soybean and pea production meeting will be held Mar. 8 at the Canad Inns in Portage starting at 8:30 am. This is a half day seminar to help equip Manitoba’s soybean and pulse growers with tools to face production challenges and market access issues. Topics on pea and soybean agronomy, pests, disease ID, weed management, soil health and more will be covered.

Registration begins at 7:30 am, to pre-register go to manitobapulse.ca/ getting-it-right. The event is free for MPSG members. Please contact the Manitoba Agriculture office in Portage at 204-239-3353 or shawn.cabak@gov.mb.ca for more information.