The Moos Room™

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Dr. Joe Armstrong: What is up, everybody? This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. This week on The Moos Room, we're going to keep it short. We got a lot going on. I'm on paternity leave. The storm has put everyone a little bit behind. Bradley's catching up at The Dairy, so we're going to do an update on our BVD case study that began all the way back in Episode 102, followed that up with 128, and then Episode 139 was the last time we touched on this subject.
Brief overview. We had calf mortality issues on a farm where everything was being done really, really, really well. Despite everything being done really, really well, calves were dying left and right, and the timing of the mortalities pointed us towards BVD. We checked for BVD, found BVD, had six PI calves in that herd. We needed to go back and check the dams of those calves and the fall herd, the replacement heifers, and our natural service bulls.
Today, we're just going to update you on where we're at. We got the rest of the testing done, checked all the dams of the six calves that came up PIs, and then we checked the fall herd, the replacement heifers, and our natural service bulls. Good news is we found no other positive BVD animals on this farm. Now, initially, when you think about this, a lot of people ask how can that be. How can we have PIs and that many PIs and not have an animal that's been in this herd for a long time that's been causing this?
Well, a lot of this comes down to one PI can make a lot more of itself if it exposes the pregnant animals during the correct time period, and on almost every cow-calf operation, there are quite a few terminal calves, whether they're heifers or steers. If I have a PI that ends up being a terminal calf, that animal can cause the problem and then leave the herd, and you have no idea where your problem came from to begin with.
That can happen for several years in a row, where you have a PI that just happens to be a terminal calf, and then that PI calf sticks around for just the one year because it's going to go off to a feedlot somewhere. It makes more of itself before it leaves the herd because it's there during that time in pregnancy where that fetus is susceptible to becoming a PI.
So what's next for this herd? We've talked about this a little bit. These six calves have to go somewhere, and they've got to go somewhere where they're not going to be around other cattle and be raised by themselves. That's one option. The other unfortunate option, which we've talked about, is that these six calves need to be euthanized. We cannot pass this problem on to the next person, because as we've seen, it's devastating to a herd or a farm, and it can be devastating to push these calves into a feedlot as well. The responsible thing to do is to find a home for them where they can be raised by themselves, not around other cattle, no cattle anywhere near them, or they have to be euthanized.
This herd is going to be doing a lot of other testing with calves as they hit the ground to check for BVD because we know that our pregnant animals were exposed to a BVD PI animal during that time in pregnancy where that fetus is susceptible to becoming a PI. We'll have updates on that. We'll have updates on how this calving season goes for this farm because we're hoping that things are going to go so much better and this is going to feel like a brand new herd to this farm.
I know this is Episode 150 and it's kind of anti-climactic to have Episode 150 just be me talking for a few minutes, giving you a case update, and then jumping off, but we're trying to take our own advice here a little bit, where we got behind because of the snowstorm. I'm on paternity leave. We're trying to take some time for ourselves around the holidays. We encourage you to do the same thing. Make sure you prioritize what's important, your family, safety, especially as we move into these colder temperatures, extreme weather, all of that.
Can't get off the episode without saying to everybody, slow down, think twice, be safe. Have a happy holidays, everybody. Questions, comments, scathing rebuttals, they go to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. I'm going to wrap it there. Thank you, everybody. We'll catch you guys next week.
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