5 Steps to Reduce Stillbirths and Abortions

How many stillbirths were recorded on your dairy last year? Any idea how much they cost you? A stillbirth is defined as a calf born dead from 260 days of gestation up to 48 hours following birth.

The national average is just above 8%. In addition, about 11 to 13 percent of calves from first- lactation dams are stillborn, while the stillbirth rate for calves from second or later lactation dams is about half of that. The stillbirth rate is higher in male calves than females, most likely due to greater calving difficulty.1

Stillbirths cost the dairy industry more than $125 million2 annually. That doesn’t include the additional costs of increased risk of metritis, retained placenta, reduced reproductive efficiency and lower milk production.

What about abortions? How many of these challenges to reproductive efficiency occurred in your herd in the past 12 months? “Normal” is considered to be between 3% and 5%.

Abortions are extremely costly as well, extracting anywhere from $500 to $9003 per occurrence depending on when in the pregnancy they take place. By definition, abortions occur from 42 days of gestation to 260 days of gestation. Cost is assigned based on the value of the replacement animal, feed and milk prices, and the stage of gestation when the abortion occurs.

As you can see, and have probably experienced, stillbirths and abortions both result in pricey outcomes with lingering negative effects on your herd. Here are five ways to reduce their occurrence in your dairy:

1: Keep good individual animal health records.

Like most management challenges, stillbirths and abortions do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they can have ties to other actions or events. Furthermore, it’s essential to be able to track stillbirth and abortion trends so that you know when incidence is on the rise.

• Track breeding dates, parity, milk production data, health events (like disease or vaccination) and calving difficulty to help identify factors which may be associated with abortions or may be implicated in stillbirths. Other information such as ration changes, new herd additions and personnel changes can also be helpful to determine causes and should be recorded.
• Track your monthly and annual stillbirth and abortion rates. Shoot for about 6% or less of both on an annual basis.

  2: develop and follow a good vaccination protocol.

  Work with your veterinarian to create a comprehensive vaccination program tailored to your herd and management strategies, especially when it comes to preventing abortions. Although, according to the University of Missouri:4

  • The cause of the majority (67%) of abortions in dairy heifers is unknown
  • Viral and bacterial pathogens are responsible for 11% and 15% of pregnancy losses, respectively
  • Noninfective causes are responsible for 2% and fungal sources cause 5% of abortions

  Still, a proper vaccination program featuring safe and efficacious vaccines should be followed to reduce the impact of infectious diseases that can cause abortions in cattle. Keep in mind that a vaccination program targeted at reproductive diseases should include, at a minimum, Leptospirosis, Bovine Viral Diarrhea and Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis and their various serovars when appropriate. Be sure to practice proper handling and administration of vaccines to achieve optimal results.

  3: reduce dystocia.

  Stillbirths occur during assisted and unassisted births. But dystocia (difficult calving) increases
  the need to assist during calving and significantly raises the odds of stillbirths. Animals that show excessive body condition or excessive weight loss during the last trimester of pregnancy are prone to dystocia,5 so be sure to carefully monitor nutrition and provide a well-formulated ration during this timeframe. Also consider removing heifers with small pelvic areas from your herd.

  Include calving-ease into your mating strategy and use sires with proven ability to reduce dystocia in your breeding program—especially with first-calf heifers.

  4: train employees to properly assist births.

  Make sure maternity area personnel know how and when to assist at calving. Experts recommend training and retraining employees on correct procedures and concepts at least once a year; twice a year is even better.

  Training programs and hands-on demonstrations can significantly reduce stillbirths. According to data from The Ohio State University, calving personnel who increased their knowledge of calving assistance reduced the incidence of stillbirths from 15.5% to 6.5%.5

  5: adopt basic biosecurity practices.

  The goal here is to reduce the risk of introducing diseases onto the farm, and the spread of disease within the herd. This includes actions like quarantining purchased cattle for a period of time or maintaining a “closed” herd as much as possible. You may also consider asking farm visitors to wear clean clothing and to disinfect footwear and any equipment that may have been in contact with other cattle.

  While far from an exhaustive list, these recommendations can help reduce the incidence of stillbirths and abortions on your dairy. And that’s time and effort well spent.

  Source: Dairy Cattle Reproduction Counsel