I got this email yesterday and it reinforced just why this mob grazing blog is important and how we can all utilize each others experiences to make our operations better and more profitable:
Nathan,
I am a fellow mob grazer and have been looking for solutions to our massive scour problem. It sounds like you have experienced similar in a large mob situation. We have 350 cows in Virginia on 1000 open grazing acres. We have had scour issues this bad in the past but found the solution with the sandhills calving but this year were determined not to split the herd. What a nightmare- needles, drenches, and pills. Dead calves and buzzards circling. after the first 100 we split the herd but two weeks later its in the second herd we have split again and I think it has hit the third herd. We have talked with sources and they have said to much protein save more residual and move but that did not work. Vet says vaccinate next year with scours bos 9 but was hoping for a low input survival of the fittest operation but that will break me.I dont know if we should just plan the herd separation in our grazing plan (sandhills calving) or maybe it does not work anymore but I believe we just got scours started and once it starts you talk about a plague. Yellow scours, white scours, grey scours, and coccidiossis. By the way we fall calve starting in late August and will finish by middle of Oct. Just hoping we can find a solution to this problem as their our not many large herd producers with these issues and mob grazing. Maybe change calving to late april, may? Lets figure this out.
Brian
As most of you that read this blog are aware, we went thru very similar issues earlier this year and I'm hopeful that by sharing this with Brian, we may be able to learn more about what is causing these problems and how to mitigate them.
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Wish I had more help for you. We have a small herd on grass and only had scour problems when we birthed too early (Jan/Feb). Extension says to move them to fresh grass daily, which is abundant in spring. We're moving our calving to Mar-May window to beat the flies, but still put on grass (as well as taking advantage of high June prices for yearlings. I'd ask Extension if I were you, even if they are just up on the dope-em-up side of things.
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