Effect of calving assistance and supplementation of colostrum with sodium bicarbonate on newborn calf vigor, success of passive transfer, health, and growth of dairy calves
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The objective of this research was to examine the efficacy of supplementing colostrum with sodium bicarbonate for improving passive transfer, health, and growth. An additional objective was to evaluate the effects of calving difficulty on calf vigor. A total of 543 heifer and bull calves from 9 commercial dairy herds were enrolled in this randomized double-blind field trial. At birth, calves were assessed for vigor by the dairy producer, using a prototype calf vigor assessment tool which rated Visual appearance, Initiation of movement, General responsiveness, Oxygenation, and Rates of heartbeat and respiration (VIGOR). Subsequently, calves were fed colostrum supplemented with either 20 g of sodium bicarbonate (SB) or placebo powder. Blood was collected from each calf between 1 and 8 days of age for serum total protein (STP). Each calf was assessed with a standardized clinical score for general health, and measured for growth using a heart girth weight tape at 1, 2, 3, and 6 weeks of age. The findings suggest that calves born with assistance, or that were malpositioned at calving, had lower vigor than those born unassisted. Yet, calf vigor improved with time following birth. Measures from the VIGOR score, including slower responsiveness and a higher heart rate, were associated with reduced health. There was a significant interaction between sex of the calf and SB supplementation of colostrum with STP. Sodium bicarbonate supplementation of colostrum was not significantly associated with improved passive transfer, and had no significant effect on weight gain. Assessment of calf vigor in calves born with assistance may be an important management tool for dairy producers as an indicator that further intervention may be needed to improve health.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".