This was the start of a conversation that I have had with my regular Monday morning client for the past several years. I’d shrug and say “Nothin’, how about with you?”

But whenever I would return from my annual American Association of Bovine Practitioners meeting, I never got off that easily. There has always been a responsibility on my part to pass along information that I learned at the meeting to this particular client. His thought process was that if I needed to miss a weekly herd check, it had better benefit him in some way.

While research has documented conclusively that pasteurizing waste milk significantly reduces bacterial levels in the liquid calf feed source, USDA researchers have taken an interesting look at how the feeding practice affects long-term gut flora in the animals.

Just a decade ago, pasteurizing colostrum was virtually unheard of in the U.S. dairy industry. Then, as the benefits of pasteurizing waste milk for calves were realized and the practice was embraced on-farm, interest in colostrum was sparked as well. Could the bacteria-reducing, calf-performance-enhancing results of pasteurization also be applied to colostrum?

Utilization of waste milk as a source of nutrition for the growing calf. Waste milk is comprised of transition milk from cows during the first three days after calving and that collected from cows treated with antibiotics or removed from the milking string due to other illness. Surveys from Wisconsin and results from field studies conducted in North Carolina and California show it contains in excess of 29% fat and 27% protein. This compares very favorably to the nutrient content of 20% fat: 20% protein of most traditional milk replacers.