Taking the Guesswork out of Stillbirths

Nobody enjoys pulling out dead calves, especially since their effect on the bottom line of dairy operations can be significant. The rate of stillborn calves has been increasing in the US over the last 20 years, and although many experts including nutritionists, reproductive specialists, management consultants, and geneticists have tried to solve the problem, the rate of dead calves has continued to increase.

Recently lubrication products and calf resuscitators have been added to the tools available to help producers reduce the incidence of stillborn calves. Add that to the effect that geneticists have had through calving ease evaluations, nutritionists have had through better diets throughout life, and reproductive specialists on breeding heifers at the right size and weight, you would think the problem would be solved, or at least decreasing, but unfortunately this is not the case. In fact, the average occurrence of stillborn calves in first calf heifers has increased from less than 9% in 1985 to about 12% currently.

Now with the August sire summaries, geneticists will take another crack at the problem. Instead of simply evaluating the ease of the calving delivery, now we will be evaluating the actual result (dead or alive) of the calving. The goal is two-fold. First to identify those service sires that tend to produce less (or more) dead calves. This evaluation will be called “Service Sire Stillbirth” or may just be referred to as “Stillbirth” (SB). We have all pulled out a calf that seems to be normal sized, and had few problems delivering it, but it was still born dead. If we can identify certain service sires where this happens more often than average, we can help reduce the number of disappointments caused when a calf is stillborn.

The second component of the stillbirth evaluations (and perhaps more important for the long-term health of your herd and the breed) is called “Daughter Stillbirth” (DSB). This trait identifies those sires which have DAUGHTERS that tend to deliver less (or more) dead calves. We know that daughters of some bulls have less problems calving than daughters of other bulls (through Daughter Calving Ease evaluations), and now we are also tracking the stillbirth incidence of bull’s daughters. The bottom line regarding daughter stillbirth (DSB) is that we can make slow steady progress towards creating cows that are more likely to deliver live calves.

A logical question might be what physical traits will cause a cow to have more live (or dead) calves? Most would assume that a wider rump or more optimal rump angle might decrease the likelihood of a cow delivering a dead calf, but in fact the incidence of stillborn calves cannot be linked to any of the physical traits, so to genetically change the likelihood of stillborn calves, the physical makeup of the cow cannot be counted on - instead we must trust that certain bulls just have daughters that are more likely to deliver a live calf.

As many of you know, this trait is recorded directly into DC305, PCDART, DHIPLUS, and other management programs at the time of freshening, and with the help of our Alta Advantage (R) partners, and their accurate records, we can track the ability of each sire to deliver live calves. Although the heritability of stillbirth (SB) and daughter stillbirth (DSB) are both relatively low, the economic importance of these traits are huge. In a simple example, valuing heifer calves at $600 and bull calves at $200 (for an average calf value of $400), reducing the incidence of stillbirths on a 1000 cow dairy from 15% to 5% results in 50 more live calves each year worth $20,000!!

Granted the percentage of stillborns is slightly higher for male calves than females, but even so the economic impact is huge! Therefore every effort that can be made from both a management and genetic standpoint to reduce stillborn calves should be carefully evaluated. Complete evaluations of your heard can be conducted if you have high rates of stillbirth’s and need to make management practice changes to reduce this number. It is important to develop a strategy to properly implement stillbirth evaluations into your breeding plan. Talk to your Alta representative for more information.

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Posted Aug 22nd

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