The Moos Room™

[music]
Dr. Joe Armstrong: What's up, everybody? This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. You're listening to the Moos Room. This episode is a presentation that I gave to a group of beef producers. Almost every single thing in this episode applies to both beef and dairy. Even though this was given to a group of beef producers, almost everything applies to both beef and dairy. There's one small segment where we talk about colostrum, we talk about quantity and how much we give to a beef calf and how we ensure that it's clean, all of those things. That's different than dairy cows, but everything else applies. I hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you for listening.
Today we're talking about vaccines and written protocols and how that works. It's going to be a little different than probably what you've heard in the past, maybe, old hat, if you've heard me talk before. We're going to start the discussion not with vaccines, but what matters most for cattle health in general. What we're talking about is specifically calf health, because that's the foundation for how we get healthy animals that last a long time in our system or in our operation. We're going to talk about the hierarchy of importance for calf health, but that also applies to lifetime performance as well.
When we look at the hierarchy of importance for calf health, it all comes down to colostrum. Colostrum is number one, both quantity and quality, how quickly you get it in, all of those things. Colostrum, dairy beef doesn't matter, it matters the most to these calves, and it is the most important thing that we can do for that calf and the biggest predictor of lifetime productivity, do it cannot be ignored.
Health and nutrition come next. When we're talking about it for that calf, having the nutrition set up for that calf correctly, and having everything going well for her, it determines how well that calf is going to do, and also determines the quality and the quantity of that colostrum. Health and nutrition is number two on my list.
After that, it comes down to what is the calf actually getting in groceries? We've got all the calories going in, they're in the right form, and that calf is growing, that's what matters, is keeping that calf healthy, having a fat reserve on that calf so if they do see something and their immune system is challenged, they have enough energy in reserve to really fend that off and make sure that they stay healthy through that disease challenge.
After that it's, can we limit exposure as much as possible to our harmful pathogens? Calves are going to get exposed. There's nothing you can do about it. They're going to see some of these pathogens, they're going to see some of these things that cause scours and respiratory illness. There's nothing we can do about that, but we can limit how much they see because most of these things are dose-dependent and hopefully allow their immune system to respond to an appropriate amount of exposure by keeping things clean and tidy and using animal flow to our advantage.
After that, stress is a huge factor, both for the cow and the calf. Stress suppresses our immune system and it decreases our response to vaccines. It does all these other things that are not good for the health of our calf and for our cow. Stress becomes very important in this whole thing, and it's something that we have to keep an eye on and make sure that we're taking care of handling our animals in a low stress way and making sure their lives are as stress-free as possible.
Then way down on the list, we're almost to the end of it, we've got vaccines. Vaccines given to calves. Now, I say specifically given to calves because they are vaccines that are incredibly important and we give them to cows and they can affect colostrum quality. Those things are very important as well. Vaccines are way down on the list and all these other things, I truly believe are more important than those vaccines. We'll get into a little bit of the why, but they're important. Their insurance, the risk management tools, we need them and you should be giving them in certain situations, but they're less important than all these other management factors when it comes to the health of your animals.
Then lastly, I put genetics down on the bottom and that's just a reminder to tell me that genetics are important and we need to think about them, but I will always take a well-managed, lower-genetic value animal over a high-genetic value animal that's been poorly managed and has not taken care of the other things on this list very well. I'll make that trade all day.
On the beef side, when we're talking colostrum, we're talking two to four quarts within six hours of birth. Now, it's hard to know how much that calf is drinking, but that comes down to making sure that that calf is drinking, that the cow has not rejected that calf, and you're observing that, if you can, actually seeing that calf nurse. These are the four cues of colostrum that we've taken from the dairy side. Quantity, quality, quickly, and squeaky clean.
Squeaky clean, we can have an effect on as much as you may not think it, and that comes down to mud control and making sure that those utters are clean. It's not just the udder either, it's the belly of that cow. It's anything that that calf can reach because we all know that they don't just find the udder right away. Quantity, quality come down to nutrition. Quickly is influenced by you being able to observe that calf nurse and make sure it happens. Then squeaky clean is keeping your animals clean and dry.
When I say take care of mom and nutrition-wise, what we're talking about is keeping our body conditions stable year round. That that used to be something that we just thought was a given. After calving, we're going to drop body condition, and that's not necessarily true. If we handle nutrition correctly and we are aiming for that five to five and a half body condition, and we can really key in on that with certain things, including bunk space and water and our mineral program to make our group uniform, we can manage the group as a uniform group and make targeted nutrition decisions and avoid this roller coaster ride of body condition going up and down and up and down because that's what affects us.
On the dairy side, what we see is that that big change in body condition after calving affects our reproduction quite a bit. It has to apply on the beef side as well. We need to avoid that rollercoaster ride. The way we do that is having adequate bunk space, which is two feet per head in linear bunk space so that everyone can eat at the same time. No one's missing out at the bunk. Some of that comes down to separating ages as well. We don't have time to get into all of that, but water, mineral program, those are things you need to work with your veterinarian and your nutritionist to make sure those things are right.
We talk about all these things. We talk about colostrum, dam health, calf nutrition, calf environment, calf stress, and then finally, vaccines towards the end of the list just ahead of genetics. I think that vaccines given to calves, we should be striving to do that as little as possible in your system. That's something you have to work with your veterinarian on and really hold to that VCPR, that veterinary client-patient relationship, and ask your veterinarian what's right for your system. I'm personally always looking to do less and spend less and still make the whole system better.
When it comes to vaccines, you can actually do that quite often. Taking vaccines out, fixing the management problems that cause you to need those vaccines will allow you to spend less, do less and make the whole system better. What we're trying to do is reallocate resources. Instead of having to give two or three shots to every calf, I want you to give none and then spend that time that you would've spent giving those shots and doing all those things, working on these other things that matter more, like we talked about, that are above the vaccines on the hierarchy.
Big disclaimer here is that you have to work with your veterinarian. The best thing about the cattle industry to me is that it's not cookie cutter, and we don't want it to be cookie cutter. I love the variety and I love that people can customize their system to their lifestyle and make the logistics work for them. Not every cattle operation is the same, and I don't want them to be. You have to work with your veterinarian who knows your system best. These are general guidelines from me. I don't want to step on your veterinarian [unintelligible 00:08:33], so please talk to them about any of these changes that you might make as we go forward in this presentation.
What makes a vaccine valuable? Well, we have several criteria for giving vaccines, but what makes up the core, what we decide gets to every animal is really focused on these things. Does the vaccine work, and how much does it cost, and then what is the risk to my herd and my animals based on how prevalent the disease is, and what would happen if I wasn't protected and I was exposed to that disease? Like I said, their risk mitigation, their insurance, and they're definitely not absolute protection. You have to keep that in mind as you're working through this.
We've all learned a lot more about vaccines in the last couple of years, and what we know is that vaccines, and most of them are not intended to prevent infection, they're intended to mitigate and decrease clinical signs if we do see the disease. What we really need to do is decide what's in our core, what should be given to every animal. Then timing becomes important after that.
There's different types of vaccines. There's really three, I'm oversimplifying it here. There's three here. Modified live vaccines, inactivated or killed vaccines, and then a combination of the two. Some of our vaccines have pieces of both. When we give a vaccine, the goal, like I said, is not to prevent infection. We can overwhelm any vaccine. It's not absolute, but what we're trying to do is mitigate clinical signs when we do see that disease and make it less harmful to our animals and prevent some of the big fallouts or issues that we could have.
What viruses, what diseases are we worried about? When it comes to respiratory viruses, we're looking at IBR, PI3, BRSV, BVD, and coronavirus. Those are the big five that I worry about. Most of these are found in your respiratory five-way. I promise I can't count. There's IBR, PI3, BRSV, and then there's two types of BVD, which gives us our five-way modified live for respiratory.
Bovine coronavirus is assessed individually for each farm and something that you should talk to your veterinarian about. When we look at our intranasal vaccines, INFORCE 3 and Nasalgen, those contain IBR, PI3, BRSV, but do not contain BVD. Again, something just to be aware of, because BVD is one of our big diseases that we worry about that can be extremely detrimental to your cattle operation. It is just something to be aware of. They're not in our intranasal vaccines, INFORCE 3 or Nasalgen 3.
When it comes to bacteria on the respiratory side, we worry about Mannheimia haemolytica and Pasteurella multocida. Those two are the two primary ones that I worry about. To me, Mannheimia is potentially one of the bacteria that could be infective and cause disease without the aid of a virus, potentially. Most of our diseases start with a virus and then produce a secondary bacterial infection.
Histophilus somni, the vaccine efficacy is questionable. Again, something to talk to your veterinarian about. There's places for it and reasons to do it, but I don't consider it part of our respiratory core because the vaccine, to me, is not effective enough. There's other products out there, [unintelligible 00:11:58] ONE SHOT, those cover Mannheimia, but not Pasteurella multocida. Again, something to talk to your veterinarian about.
Pasteurella multocida, I personally don't worry about unless we have a viral issue that's causing a secondary infection. It's nice to get coverage for it, but if I had to choose between the two, I would vaccinate for Mannheimia before I vaccinated for multocida. Just, again, conversation to have with your veterinarian who knows your system best.
On the reproductive side, a lot of the same viruses apply. The big two that we worry about, IBR and BVD. IBR can cause abortions, it can cause all other things. BVD is the one that causes a persistent infection in calves, and that's hugely detrimental. These PI calves or persistently infective calves with BVD can wreck an operation. BVD causes generalized immunosuppression, so cattle get sick for all sorts of crazy reasons and don't respond to treatment well. It can be devastating. It can also cause abortions. It can also cause more PI calves. Basically, they create more of themselves, and it's a bad deal. It's something that has to be in the core because we need that protection against PI creation and against abortions from BVD.
On the bacteria side, there's leptospirosis, campylobacter brucellosis. These are all things that we worry about. Lepto is somewhat controversial, depending on where you are in the country and how confined your cattle are. Lepto can be found anywhere. It's carried by mice and deer in their urine. Usually, we associate it with stagnant water. Cattle will drink from anything. We know that. They'll drink from a little tiny puddle, even when there's clean, nice water available. Keep that in mind.
To me, it becomes part of the core, mostly because the vaccines are so available and inexpensive compared to vaccines, without them, that we just need to include it. Campylobacter and brucellosis, those are things to talk to your veterinarian about, and whether or not you should be vaccinating for those.
On the clostridial side, there's three big diseases. It depends on where you are in the country and what you need to deal with. Most producers are only going to deal with blackleg and tetanus. Redwater is pretty specific to swampy areas in Northern Minnesota, Northern Wisconsin, and Canada. It's probably not something that a lot of you are going to have to worry about, but I do like to cover it because the important thing to note is that our standard seven-way clostridial vaccines don't carry all of our protection against all these different bugs. When we're talking about blackleg, ALPHA-7, Bar-Vac 7, ULTRABAC 7, those are standard protection for blackleg.
Redwater isn't necessarily included right away, so that's something you have to look for. You'd be looking for a Clostridium haemolyticum. That is what you would need in that vaccine to cover for redwater. Tetanus is the same way. It's not included. Clostridium tetani is not included in every clostridial vaccine. If you're banding, or even if you're using a Henderson tool, I like to have coverage for tetanus. That's something you need to be aware of and know which ones are available and which vaccines contain that tetanus.
When we talk about a respiratory core, it's really that five-way viral that we discussed before, IBR, PI3, BRSV, and the two types of BVD. When we talk about a reproductive core, all I do is add lepto to those four. That's what gives us that nine-way. We've got IBR, PI3, BRSV, two types of BVD, and then four strains of lepto. That would be our reproductive core, given to all animals that are involved in reproduction, including your bull. On the Clostridium side, we definitely need coverage. The seven-way becomes your absolute bare minimum core, should be given to all animals, including your bull. Then we add the other two as necessary, either tetanus or redwater.
Okay. Let's get into this discussion about the timing of these modified lives. We can't get out of this presentation without talking about when do we give those and why. We're using modified lives in young animals to then set them up correctly later for the options to do something else. To me, the data shows that if we set animals up correctly with modified live vaccines so that their setup and their immune system is ready to go, that is more effective than using killed vaccines or anything else early in life. Modified lives are incredibly important in the setup of animals in that we have options for what we do later.
When it comes to the most important vaccine on your farm, I would argue that the most important vaccine on your farm is the modified live pre-breeding that you give to your heifers. That pre-breeding modified live is the one that protects you against these diseases that can put you out of business when we're talking BVD, IBR, protects you from abortions and all these other things. I tend to err on making sure that vaccine gets to heifers, and that being the most important one, and then we work out from there when we develop our vaccine protocol.
In terms of timing, when we're talking about when to give this modified live pre-breeding, the bare minimum, absolute bare minimum is 30 days prior to breeding. The IBR in these modified live vaccines can affect reproduction in a lot of ways, and can affect the ovary itself and the structures on the ovary that allow that animal to become pregnant. We have to space it out and get it away from the time of breeding. 30 days is the bare minimum. I would love to see it pushed out to 45 or even 60 days before breeding, and making sure that's when it's getting in.
A lot of times we can do that because we're going to be handling animals anyway for whether it's Scour Bos or GUARDIAN shots when we're talking about these vaccines that we give to our cows to help their colostrum. Important to know, 30 days bare minimum before we're breeding, and preferably 45 to 60 days before that bull goes in or AI. The importance of that and using modified lives in our calves and our younger animals and then again in pre-breeding is it allows us to then use a killed vaccine from then on to maintain that immunity. Their studies show that that is very protective and actually potentially more protective than just using modified lives all the way through.
The other reason that we have to worry about how many times we've given that modified live vaccine before breeding is that, if we've given enough times and we do choose to use a modified live vaccines, there's minimal consequence to that decision. If you have animals that have not responded to a modified live before and they are relatively naive to those diseases and the things that are in that modified live vaccines, specifically IBR, and you give that to a pregnant animal, you can cause abortions, and you will cause abortions.
When I weigh the risks and the protection and everything else, I would prefer to set up animals correctly with a modified live and then use a killed vaccine from then on and not worry about giving a modified live to a pregnant animal. That's my opinion. I think it's supported by data, but there's definitely other opinions out there. There's a cost piece of that as well when it comes to the expense of the vaccine itself, but I love the peace of mind of giving a killed vaccine to a pregnant animal rather than a modified live. That's the way that I choose to go.
I think immunity can be maintained if we do it correctly with modified lives in the beginning of life, and then killed from then on. Yearly killed vaccines rather than going back to a modified live, pre-breeding if we don't need to. Again, lots of opinions there. Talk to your veterinarian.
All right, everybody. I'm going to stop it there. The rest of the presentation really gets heavy into diagrams and pictures. It's just not something that's going to translate well to a podcast. I hope you enjoyed the information in the episode this week. If you have comments, questions, scaling rebuttals, those go to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @ U-M-N dot E-D-U.
If you would like to call and ask us a question, leave us a voicemail, that's 612-624-3610. 612-624-3610. Please visit our website extension.umn.edu, and catch us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety. Thank you, everybody, for listening. We'll catch you next week.
[music]
[00:21:14] [END OF AUDIO]

1