“The Elephant in the Room”
by Chris Reinhardt, feedlot specialist
Calf health is probably the most scrutinized yet poorly understood areas of cattle feeding. The beef industry has voluminous data on sickness and death loss in various classes of feedlot cattle. We tirelessly investigate the science behind modern vaccines and antimicrobials. And yet the U.S. beef industry has not substantially improved the health outcome of feedlot cattle in 30 years.
Vaccine technology has continued to progress and producers certainly have better knowledge of the use and administration of vaccines than only a generation ago. The veterinary community has, necessarily, increased pharmacovigilance in order to preserve the efficacy of available antimicrobials. Most diagnostic labs currently keep a running database of antimicrobial resistance in populations of respiratory organisms.
And yet, in spite of all our advanced technology and knowledge, the most effective program for reducing respiratory disease in calves, is reducing stress.
Stress is the enemy of immunity. We see this in cattle, and we see this in our own human bodies. In otherwise healthy people, the greatest risk of cold and flu comes during or after periods of stress. Stress changes the way the body responds to invading pathogens—either viral or bacterial.
Most respiratory bacteria can be isolated from the respiratory tract of healthy cattle. But it usually requires the damage caused by a viral invasion for these bacteria to take over. The simple presence of viral pathogens is not sufficient to elicit disease, either. The critical factor causing a “tipping point” is stress.
Stress can come in the form of inclement weather, abrupt weaning, isolation, commingling with unfamiliar cattle, extended transport, rough handling, mud, dusty conditions, etc. Unfortunately, many of these conditions are unavoidable when receiving calves into the feedyard. We simply must deal with the outcomes of these stressful conditions.
Fortunately, in home-weaned and home-raised calves, we CAN prevent many, if not all, of these disease-causing stressors. By raising the calves locally, you can dramatically reduce or eliminate transport, commingling, and isolation. Through low-stress, quiet handling techniques we can (and should) eliminate rough handling. Using fence-line weaning or other techniques we can reduce weaning stress. We can affect pen conditions by scraping and bedding, and we can provide shelter to alleviate poor weather conditions.
The rancher who weans and raises calves at home has a tremendous advantage over commercial feedyards with respect to health outcome of weaned calves. While a commercial feedyard must simply manage health to the best of their ability in spite of the numerous stressors, ranchers can prevent a huge proportion of disease simply by reducing stress.
And with estimates of lost profitability of $150-200 for sick calves, reducing stress sounds like money in the bank.
