The Moos Room™

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Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. We are talking about delayed vaccination protocols today, just me today. Hope you're not too disappointed. This is something that came up in our conversation last week when we answered some questions from listeners, and we were talking about the timing of vaccination in a feedlot setting for certain groups, and I talked briefly about delaying vaccination for these groups, and somewhat talked about implants as well, and how that fits in.
Today, I want to follow up on this, and dig into it a little more. Talk about the research behind that, why I make the decisions I do when it comes to feedlots and delayed vaccination protocols, or delayed implanting protocols. That's all on the docket today. Some of what we're going to get into today, involves a definition of high-risk calves, and high-risk cattle coming to a feedlot.
That dictates a lot of what I do personally when I develop protocols for feedlots on what to do with their receiving of these cattle. There will be a small discussion on what does that mean? What are some of the pieces of it that I think we forget about sometimes, that dictate a lot of these things as well, because high-risk cattle don't only happen on the cattle side of things, before the feedlot gets them.
We are more than capable of taking a very solid group and making them high-risk by putting them in a high-risk environment. That is the key, in my opinion, when we're making decisions about protocols, is evaluating not just the cattle themselves, but the environment that they're going to go into. Background on the list a little bit. Delayed vaccination protocol. What am I talking about?
Well, traditionally, in a feedlot, we're getting cattle in, and we're working them on arrival. They're hitting the chute, they're getting vaccines, they're getting implants, they're getting whatever they need to be successful in that feedlot on arrival. That is still a valid way to do things. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing it that way. It just depends, for me, on the factors that make a group high risk, or low risk, or bulletproof, or however you want to designate whether or not the cattle are high risk.
When I say, "Delayed vaccination protocol," that usually means, getting the cattle in and letting them rest, letting them sit for 7, 14, or 30 days before you work them with a vaccine.
Now. there's different research, and there's different things that we delay. Most of the time when we're talking about delaying vaccination, we're talking about delaying vaccination with a modified life.
There's definitely situations where you want to work cattle right away, or within the first 48 to 72 hours. We don't have time to get into all of those details today, but there's reasons to delay vaccination. Usually, when we talk about delaying something, we're talking about delaying that modified live vaccine. The idea behind this delay is that, these cattle come in, and they're already relatively high-stress, because of the things that make them high risk, long drive, multiple groups put together, unknown vaccine history, all sorts of things that go into high-risk cattle.
As we've talked about before on this program, I am not a proponent of stacking stress, when they're already stressed, and then we throw a vaccine on top of it, we're stacking that stress. They're already immunocompromised or immunosuppressed. Their response to that vaccine is going to be subpar at best. I'm not a fan of throwing vaccine on top of an already high-stress, high-risk group.
Now, I certainly didn't come up with this idea on my own. It's not mine. There's plenty of research behind this to show potential benefits of a delayed vaccine protocol in high-risk cattle, when it comes to BRD, especially morbidity, mortality, all of those things. Now, one of the studies I'm going to talk about, came out of the University of Arkansas, and what they looked at was delaying vaccine protocols by 14 days versus on arrival.
They split into two groups, and those were the two groups, 14-day delay or day 0. What we saw with the 14-day delay on these high-risk cattle, was improved performance, and then numerically different morbidity, relapse, and mortality. Now, there's a word in there that is very, very key, and that word is "numerically". When you see that word in relation to a journal paper, what we're saying is that, you can see a difference in the data numerically, but statistically, there is no significant difference that we can identify. You have to be pretty careful when you hear the word "numerically".
Sometimes, it's really good to look at those numerical differences and decide, "Okay, based on the way this study was run, the power of how many animals were involved, is this a real difference or not?" Without the power, from the statistics to say, "Yes, those two groups are statistically significantly different," is hard to say what's really going on. Oftentimes, it means that we just need more animals and more research behind this to show whether or not those two groups really are different or not, because the problem with some of these studies is, they don't have enough animals to give them the power to show differences when they're relatively small.
Even though they could be very relevant to production and economically important for groups of animals in a feedlot. That's one study. We have one study that showed a significant difference when it came to performance in favor of the 14-day delay of vaccination. Now, there's another study out there where they looked at delaying 30 days versus on arrival. The delay is now 30 days, but they did not delay anything, but the modified live vaccine.
Both groups within the first 72 hours of arrival got a Mannheimia Haemolyticum Toxoid were metaphylactically treated with an antibiotic, were dewormed, and they were preg checked because they were heifers. Then, they waited 30 days on one group to give them modified live, or the other group got the modified live at day 0. What we see in that situation of high-risk heifers is that, there was a significant difference statistically between the two groups, when it came to re-treats.
If there was a second treatment, the success of that second treatment was statistically significantly better in the 30-day delay group. The 30-day delay group also numerically, and there's that word again, "numerically", had less morbidity and mortality. You see, we have several papers that show that there is potentially a benefit to delaying vaccination in high-risk cattle.
Now, the other factor that we need to talk about quickly before we move on to some of my-- More opinions on this topic, and get away from the research just a little bit, is the research behind delaying implants. Traditionally, again, we would implant on arrival to the feedlot, along with all the vaccinations and everything else, and there's a time and a place for that for sure.
Now, some of the thought in recent years has been, maybe that implant should be delayed, because we're metabolically challenging that animal, or we're potentially wasting implant.
If they're high risk, and they're in a negative energy balance, that implant isn't going to be working because they're not up on full feed, they're not eating enough to utilize that implant effectively.
Now, there's been some studies in the last 10 years or so that have showed that that isn't necessarily true. There's a study out of Kansas State, Dan Thompson, where they looked at delaying the implant 45 days, or giving the implant on arrival, and they looked at those two groups to see what their performance was, their health, their morbidity, mortality, all of those things, and they found there really wasn't a difference between the groups.
There also was no difference found when it came to carcass performance. Now, numerically, when we look at this study, again, hear that word "numerically", there was a slight advantage to the delayed implant group in carcass value per pound. Important to note numerically. There was a statistically significant difference in favor of the delayed implant group when it came to the percentage of cattle railed due to chronic bovine respiratory disease illness.
When I say railed, I mean realized, or taken out of the feedlot system prematurely, because of chronic illness. You can think of that as being cold basically, where we've changed our mindset from, "Am I going to make money on this calf, or am I going to figure out how to lose the least amount?"
Now, the delayed implant conversation comes into this whole delayed vaccination protocol situation, just like we were talking about last week, where we're trying to figure out how to run these cattle through the chute the least amount of times, and based on vaccine history, based on health, based on the situation of logistics, of all the different groups coming into a yard, how are we going to figure out how to do this logistically, that makes sense for the people and the animals.
Sometimes, the conversation revolves around, "Am I going to delay implants or not. If I'm going to delay implant anyway, and I feel like that's an option, then maybe I don't have to run them through twice. I can just run them through once at the time of implant."
Here's where we need to make a really big distinction. I am leaving the realm of the research behind delayed vaccination, and now we're getting into my opinion that I think is based on a lot of this research. To be clear, we're in my opinion now, where we talk about delayed vaccination, and when I think that is appropriate, and when we should be using that technique. To me, there's value in waiting, regardless.
Usually, we're talking even 72 hours, rather than working them the day they get there, is a huge benefit to allow them to settle down, and achieve some kind of homeostasis when it comes to their immune system, and what they're doing in their environment. This delay, even a short one, can also allow you to evaluate the cattle, and really make a true decision on metaphylaxis, or treating the whole group with antibiotics, based on what you're seeing from that group after arrival.
Here again, my opinion, one of the things that I don't think is evaluated enough, is the environment these cattle are going into, and how they're managed by the people that are around them when they go into that environment. Basically, what I'm trying to get at without pulling too many punches here is, we have environments and situations, and management that can make a group high-risk.
You can buy high-risk cattle, and they are certainly high-risk, but if you put them into a low-risk, low-stress environment, where they're taken care of really, really well, that is much different than taking a high-risk group, and putting them in a high-risk environment, where the management probably isn't up to par, and you've doubled down on the stress these cattle are experiencing, when they're already high risk.
The same is true of buying low-risk cattle, or they're low-risk. They've been taken care of really well, that you know their vaccine history, they've got a short ride, they're all single-source cattle, and then you put them into a high-risk environment, where there's high-stress handling, and lots of hotshoting going on, not enough bedding, not enough bunk space, not enough water.
You've taken this low-risk group, and made them high-risk. One of the things I think is missed is, we have to match high-risk cattle with the environment they're going into, and decide, "Am I reducing their stress and making them lower risk by the environment I'm putting into, or am I doubling down on it, and making them even higher risk?" That dictates to me when we should be using delayed vaccination protocol, more so than the cattle themselves.
It's the environment that they're going into. The other piece of this is that, we don't think about how they're managed outside the pen and how we work. Some of this is facilities as well. If you have a really poorly set up facilities, and the cattle don't flow through nicely, or you have employees or people that work with you, that aren't trained in low-stress handling, you can take a low-stress group, and make them high-stress just by working them.
Again, we've taken either a high-risk group and doubled down on their risk, and made them even higher risk, or we've taken a low-risk group, and made them high-risk, purely using the environment that those cattle are in. When I'm evaluating risk and deciding on delayed vaccination, I'm looking at the group, absolutely, I want to see how far they've come, how many different sources make up that group, their vaccine history, all of those things.
I'm also looking at the facilities where they're going to be worked, how good is their bedding? How good is their bunk space? how good is their pen space? How much water do they have available? All these other things that matter to that animal's health, and that group's health, and whether or not that situation is high risk or low risk. I know that was really rambling and soapboxy, and I apologize for that, but it's a real-world consideration that we need to think about.
We need to think about the environment these cattle are going into. When we look at a research setting, a lot of times what we're looking at when we talk about high-risk cattle, is also high-risk cattle being paired with a low-risk environment, which is very different than high-risk cattle paired with a high-risk environment. All of that said, basically, what I'm saying is, the higher risk the cattle are, the higher risk the environment, the more likely I am to delay vaccination, and to delay implant, because of the benefits that we talked about in the research.
Also, because I know that, if I don't delay, I'm going to be stacking stress, no matter what, especially, if the environment is high risk. To me, there's also a difference when it comes to weight. Lighter calves, in general, are higher-risk. Breed plays a little bit of factor as well depending on where they come from. I would chalk that up more to a sourcing issue, and a history issue of vaccines in most cases when we're talking about breed, and I don't really want to get into that discussion today.
One of the other things that I think delayed vaccination protocols and delayed implant protocols achieve, is it refocuses the mindset around receiving, and it takes the emphasis off of the needle, and the shots we're going to give to fix a group of cattle. It puts the focus on, what are we going to do from the management side, taking care of these cattle to reduce their risk and reduce their stress, so we can focus on bedding appropriately.
Having the appropriate feed in the bunk, making sure there's enough bunk, enough water on receiving. Do we need additional water just during that receiving period? It changes the focus of what we're doing, when it comes to receiving protocols, because receiving protocols, in my opinion, should not just be what are we going to give them. It should be how do we take care of the pen? How do we handle those cattle, especially when they're newly received to get used to people?
What's in the bunk? How are we going to get them used to eating at the bunk, if they've never seen one? What's our water situation look like? All of these things are receiving protocol, things that we need to account for, other than what are we going to inject in these cattle? Okay, to wrap this up, and get off my soapbox, and so you guys can stop listening to me on this one is, I'm in favor of delayed vaccination protocols, especially, the higher risk a group gets, and high risk being lightweight, long travel, multiple sources in a group.
Then, pairing that high risk on the cattle side to the environment, and deciding the environment that those cattle are going into, is that high risk as well? Even if you're buying low-risk cattle, and then you have a high-risk environment, I'm more in favor of delaying vaccination protocols, because I think that environment plays such a huge role in how high-risk these cattle are, or will become after arrival to that environment.
Overall, I'm really looking for situations, where I feel comfortable reducing the number of times cattle have to go through the chute, in favor of delayed implant, delayed vaccination when they're high risk, and focusing more on the management side of things to reduce the risk of those cattle by reducing the stress they're under. I want good response to my vaccines, and that can't happen when the cattle are immunosuppressed from being stressed out or high risk.
I need to take that high-risk group, and make them low-risk. Sometimes the only way to do that is time. Ask your veterinarian about delayed vaccination receiving protocols, delayed implant, is it right for you? It's probably going to change from group-to-group on what you get into the feedlot, their history, what's going on in your life, and what's happening in your yard, and the environment those cattle are in.
As always, if you have comments, questions, scathing rebuttals to this episode, please email themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. You can find us on Twitter@UMNmoosroom, and @UMNFarmSafety. You can find us on the web at extension.umn.edu. Check out Bradley on Instagram @UMNWCROCDairy. That's all I got for you today. Thank you for listening. We will catch you next week. Bye.
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