 Good morning. We're going to talk about what we're going to talk about today is a his calf health and productivity and you might think that with the title the management equation for calf and health and productivity we're going to talk about math today. We're not actually but I want you to think about managing these calves when you're backgrounding when you're weaning think about it in a kind of an equation setting and so that's what we're going to cover today. We'll cover a little bit on vaccines as well. Just a reminder that that you and I that deal with livestock we have a stewardship responsibility and the definition of stewardship is careful and responsible management of things entrusted to one's care and these cattle have been entrusted to us and we need to do our very best in all aspects of management to make sure that they stay healthy and that they're productive. I want to start here just just to give you some expectations. We wean calves all over the country I guess in reality all over the world but we wean calves all over the country and we do it in different ways in different fashions and some involves different stressors than than what we experience up here and so if I look across the country there's probably a an expectation of zero percent sick ones to up to 50% and even higher sick cattle and an expectation for death loss or mortality from zero percent to five percent and sometimes even higher and that's due primarily to the bovine respiratory disease complex. So there's quite a range in sickness quite a range in mortality and it depends on how well we're managing some of those risk those stress issues that we're going to talk about in this presentation. This is just a reminder to us all that we haven't actually been doing better on on morbidity and mortality. This is death loss over the last 20 years or so. This now granted this comes from the feed yard which is a little bit different than what we're talking about. We're talking about weaning and backgrounding but this is death loss from 1990 through 2011 and we've gone from maybe perhaps in steers at least maybe 0.75% death loss and now we're up at almost one and a half percent. We've basically doubled in death loss over the last 20 years or so and we're not doing any better. We have better vaccines, we have better antibiotics but something's missing and we're going to talk about some of those issues that I think need to have more attention paid to it from a management standpoint. Here's your math equation and it's really not because each place and each operation is a little bit different in terms of the stressors that are involved here but I've called this the health assurance or you could call this a systems approach to health either way it works and the first bullet point it says there is a relationship of calf health an expression of genetic potential of those animals to a set of risk management factors and so I put it this way the second bullet point is calf health and productivity equals and what I mean by that equals how well we handle all of those potential stressors that come into the life of that calf starting when it's born starting when it's in utero all the way through to when it's weaned and actually to when it's finished and goes to slaughter. So let's just think about each one and then the next slide I'll just show you some pictures of what I'm really talking about. So the first one I've got is failure of passive transfer and I could qualify that a bit and say it's partial failure of passive transfer and what that means and I put immune stress there what that means is that that calf when it was in utero being fed by its mother through her diet and her exposure to in the environment and how it was born what kind of stressors were involved in that calf was born in other words calving ease birth weight what time of the year was there environmental stress when it was born any of those things that are involved with that calf whether it's in utero or when there were circumstances as to which it was born can have an impact on whether that calf picks up immunity from its mother we call that maternal immunity that is derived from the colostrum from that first milk that that calf gets up and nurses anything that interrupts that transfer can cause that calf to be at greater risk of sickness and greater risk of death loss even later in life it doesn't just apply to early in life but it even even applies to later on in life and to that expression of the genetic potential second one I have is weaning and I call that a psychological stress good now I got calves that have been removed from their mother and in many cases it's still just a companion relationship as is in some circumstances the milk that the the nutrition that's derived from milk from the cow has is not what it once was the the amount is not there and so but you still have this loss of companionship and I would say loss of that pacifier that produces a psychological stress on those calves and thirdly and sometimes this is the most important one that we forget about it's called mangling stress most of our ranchers in the northern plains don't put all the cow and calf pairs out on the same pasture there are many different pastures and so under an abrupt weaning strategy when we remove all the calves from the cows at the same time and put them all in a pen or even a grass trap together those those groups now have to reestablish pecking order and it's kind of a social stress and that can bring on signs of clinical disease signs of respiratory disease just from combing wing all by itself the fourth one I've got is environmental stress this relates to when those cows cab in the springtime is it a difficult environment that the cabin it also relates to the environmental stress that may be placed on those calves at weaning time are we weaning at a time when we've got snow and wet rain and cold and temperature fluctuations all of those can contribute to an environmental stress the fifth one I've got is nutrition are we providing enough energy and protein and trace mineral to meet those calves need once they come off pasture once they've lost whatever milk nutrition that they're getting is the is the ration palatable so they know how to eat it so there can be nutrition stress in the life of those calves as well the sixth one is exposure stress and this comes sometimes from just the weaning process sometimes from combing wing sometimes from exposure to cat to cattle that may maybe close by those calves that are freshly weaned but exposure to pathogen stress it could also be exposure to things like bovine virus diarrhea virus with calves or animals that are PI positive which means persistently infected and they've been infected since birth and they're shedding that virus continually until they die the seventh one there is the immune response and we hope that our immune response that's generated after vaccination is not a stressor it can be if we overload those calves with too many vaccines but a lack of response is certainly a stress in the life of those calves when we're trying to protect them against specific pathogens but they don't respond very well now we've made them more susceptible to some of those potential pathogens instead of seemingly trying to protect them we've made them more susceptible because we have a lack of response stress and finally this one's important too in the northern plains we don't have an ample supply of labor and many times labor is lacking in both quantity and quality and if you don't have people that know how to how to take care of cattle how to recognize when cattle aren't feeling well and need attention that's a labor stress that that is applied in this whole system so what I'm suggesting here is that when we talk about weaning when we talk about backgrounding we have to address each of these issues in some manner otherwise we're going to be disappointed in the results that we that we achieve this next slide is just a kind of a pictorial display of all those things I just talked about and then lower left-hand corner I've got cow giving birth to a calf and I talked about in utero environmental stress to that cow in utero nutrition to that calf and makes a difference in that calf's life makes a difference in the amount of maternal immunity he can pick up when he gets up and nurses and as well I've put in their birth weight and calving ease is that calf born with assistance or without assistance or even without assistance was it a difficult birth which causes that calf to not want to get up and nurse right away and get all the maternal immunity that he needs and requires in his system so that he stays healthy and stays productive throughout his entire life and that that's an arrow can apply to the calving in the weaning season as well the calving season if there's environmental stress in that cows life in that calves life when that calf being born that prevents him from getting up and nursing and getting maternal immunity in it and to a system just like I said in the same old store for the weaning season are we weaning under environmental stress with rain and wet and difficult pen conditions which puts more stress on those calves life and in many cases what I just talked about with the calving and and stress during that time we can have calves that are sick when they're really young and that's displayed with that picture in the top there in the middle of the top but but we can go beyond there and keep piling on if I could use that term how do we wean those calves are we weaning them into an environment that they're totally unfamiliar with are we trying to low stress reining with the cows close by so there's there's a number of different things that we can can utilize to take some of that stress out of this weaning procedure and sometimes maybe it's later weaning that that helps remove some of that stress when the the milk supply from the cows dried up to a point where there really are more interested in finding their own feed that can lower that that weaning or that psychological stress this this little picture here is to is a reminder that co mingling can occur even on ranches of origin when we bring calves that have not been together during the suckling phase we bring them and throw them all together at one time one of the ways to avoid that stress is to actually feed cows and calves the entire group together so that over a period of time maybe it's a week's time the cat the calves get used to one another that they haven't been used to for the the suckling phase and they're eating along with the mothers so they're learning how to eat it takes a lot of that risk it it it applies a management strategy to that co mingling this one relates to exposure and biosecurity and vaccination this is a calf that has bvd in its system was born with bvd in its system and will and has been shedding bvd in it to its other herd mates throughout the entire summer throughout the entire weaning phase and that's a stressor to to the other calves that have not been exposed to this calf because it's it's an immune suppressor and makes those calves more susceptible to developing respiratory disease and actually other conditions as well and then and then how do we handle those calves whether it be at processing or whether it be transportation or we applying low stress handling techniques to those calves such that we don't end up with a picture like this with a calf that's now been weaned in the fielot we're trying to get it to grow and gain and express its genetic potential with the feed we provide but it's not coming to the bunk because it's sick so those are things that I want all of you to think about as you as you go through the weaning phase as you go through the backgrounding phase have I addressed all of those issues you see this is a systems approach to health and it starts doesn't start the day you wean it started a long time ago when the cow was pregnant when she calved when you wean those calves how you wean them how you handle commingling how you handled exposure to other pathogens and how you handle them during even transportation and processing so think about all those things when you're even for this year but even for next year you have to start planning ahead for next year as well I just put this slide in there just to remind us of the impact of stress and I've got a funny-looking Star Wars image in the upper left-hand corner of this slide and that's that's it's a picture of what we call a dendritic cell and that just simply means that this cell that all of you have in your own body is the cell that processes the bad bugs that you might be exposed to or the bad bugs that you've received through a vaccine if this cell isn't working very properly because it's been stressed by all the things that I just mentioned I have a picture in the lower right hand corner of calves that are at the bank but there's a whole lot of environmental stress on those calves this cell that's that I'm demonstrating right here does not work very well if I've got too much stress in the system and what we end up seeing is not this cell but we end up seeing clinical disease such as bovine respiratory disease I'm going to throw this out for just some conversation because this is trying to highlight sometimes we look in the wrong places for trying to solve problems this is a bull test station I was sent this email a number of years ago and I'm just going to read it to you like it was sent to me as for a vaccination protocol sent to the bull test years ago by someone at the vet school incoming bulls must be vaccinated two to three weeks prior to arrival that makes sense of course we're trying to boost that immunity to a level that will prevent an infection and hopefully clinical disease caused by these pathogens right here IBR PI3 BRSV BVD type 1 and 2 and then also manheim hemolytica pastoral amulticidal histophilus somnus we would call it histophilus somnus anymore instead of hemophilus and then claustridial 7-way not the claustridial 7-way is a respiratory condition but they're giving all these vaccines at the same time which you could call into question maybe it's too much at once we're trying to prevent these pathogens from producing clinical disease so they're vaccinated two to three weeks prior to arrival and then when they're processing them on arrival in other words two or three weeks after this they're giving boosters which makes sense and they're giving whatever vaccines zoettus and bi donate that's all the information I have so here was the question and a little more of the scenario typically processing processing in is around July 5 this as you can tell this is in the south and the bulls are sold around December 7th within 7 to 10 days after arrival there are numerous cases of bovine respiratory disease which are treated may be treated in the process really runs to late November so the question was if the protocol pre arrival and a processing was an intranasal administered vaccine like TSV2 or and an intramuscular or subq manhemia pastorella plus claustridial and omitting the homophilus with their BLS BRD how to appreciate your advice there there's some hints in there and I'm just going to tell you right now that vaccine protocols almost are never an issue okay hopefully we can come back to this one and talk about what the real issue is here in this case report just going to talk about this a little bit because this relates to disease and it relates to the immune response I've got on that first bullet point it says BRD bovine respiratory disease incubation time is seven to ten days what that means is that in general very general terms if an animal is exposed and stressed at a certain time it's going to be seven to ten days before you're going to see clinical disease that's what that incubation time means and with enough stress that actually can be shortened it may be as soon as three four or five days but typically it's seven to ten days if I look on the other side a measurable immune response takes a while takes three to ten days maybe to begin and if I have very naive calves and we measure protection by antibody response which is not the greatest way to measure protection that's how we measure it that it'll peak that immune response will peak in somewhere in two to four weeks that doesn't always match up with this so I can have disease showing up prior to when I get a maximum immune response and that can happen if I've piled on those calves all those stressors I talked about before and they haven't been immunized properly I can be behind the curve and not catch up let's talk a little bit about vaccination protocols we're going to talk about this and and I want you to to think about your own vaccination protocol and I'm hoping you're involved your veterinarian in building vaccination protocols for the calves that you're going to wean and or buying calves that you're going to background three questions think I think need to be asked whether when I'm putting together a vaccination protocol is it necessary in other words is there a reasonable risk of pathogen exposure in infection and clinical disease and you could answer yes to many things is there a reasonable risk of exposure to manhemium hemolytica to pastorella to homophilus the answer is yes but then I'm going to ask the next question are the vaccines we currently have are they do they work are they effective is there a reasonable expectation through research through anecdotal information through observation that the vaccine is effective that's where some of these vaccines tend to fall out of place at least for me when I look at the science behind some of our vaccines today it's very questionable whether they're effective or not and if I can't answer number two I'm probably going to leave it out and then finally are they safe to use there must be a reasonable expectation that the vaccine is safe to use in other words minimal local tissue and systemic reactions to a vaccine for example I'll just give you this example if I use a modified live IBR vaccine in a pregnant cow that's never been immunized or never been exposed to IBR there might be a reasonable expectation that I can have a systemic reaction and that might be an abortion in that cow so I want to answer all these three questions in my own mind whether I'm going to recommend someone to use a vaccine is it necessary is it effective and is it safe to use and I should also say safe to use in combination with other vaccines just a reminder to us all that many of these vaccines do require booster doses especially killed vaccines and even modified live vaccines in many cases so when I give the first dose I get a primary response and we're measuring antibody as a way to measure protection which isn't always correct but it's what we typically measure so I give that dose of vaccine here I get a response here when I come back maybe it's three weeks later maybe it could be even as short as four as two weeks three to four weeks later I give another dose it's a booster dose and I'm hoping for a secondary response that's much greater than the first one we've actually come out here at like 150 150 days later and seeing a response from a vaccine given way back here so there's some things that we can learn from some of the studies that were done that this booster dose doesn't necessarily have to go in just at three to four weeks later it can actually be much longer than that three to four week later time span so the question becomes if I manage some of those risk factors will it make a difference on actual health of those calves so I'm going to share with you a study that we did and this would be trying to manage the immune response and trying to manage commingling and trying to manage weaning we're not doing really anything about environmental stressors I don't know anything about failure of passive transfer I don't know really a whole lot about nutrition stress I'm not sure about the labor stress but we're trying to measure or trying to manage some of these stressors that I talked about earlier does it make a difference or not many are many of you are familiar with the weanvac program it was an old smithkline beecham then Pfizer now zoetis program where calves have to receive certain vaccines and have to be weaned for a certain period of time and so we're going to talk about a trial that was done way back in 2003 the cattle in this study originated in the southeast usa were purchased at the joplin regional stockyard in carthage Missouri during december 2003 cattle were attract to decatur county feed yard noble in kansas where they were fed until may and then at that time it was an excel plant shipped to dodd city kansas for slaughter the original original intent was to have four treatment groups in here the treatment one was controls uh those were unween calves an unknown health history at the time of sale there was a t2 which was the actual weanvac program at that time by Pfizer calves were weaned for at least 45 days prior to sale they were bunk broke and tank broke or water broke in other words they knew what they were and had received vaccinations according to Pfizer selectvac program t3 was a pre-vac program without the weaning and there turned out there was not enough calves and that that could be purchased at that time and so that treatment group was eventually dropped out of the analysis and then there was a t4 and that was basically identical to t2 the weanvac program it was just a different company sponsored weaning program again those steers were weaned for at least 45 days and then qualified for another health just going to show you the results related to health on the calves here's t1 right here this is t1 calves calves of un unweened with unknown health history they ended up with somewhere around a 42.63 percent morbidity or sickness rate the calves in both of these other weanvac programs were about 15 percent so in other words what this telling us is that these calves were four times more likely to become ill than calves that were in these other weaning programs okay very significant statistics right here okay so what what's the difference between these two well we know there's a vaccine difference and there's a weaning difference right so that that actually seemed to make it made a difference in the health and productivity of these calves broke that one down just a little bit further because I wanted us to look at what really goes on in a feed yard this is the t1 calves here again and and these are the one the steers that were pulled one time about 26.3 percent some of those same steers had to be pulled twice about nine percent some of them had to be pulled three times and that the 7.4 percent here's the other two uh back weanvac programs 13 percent one one uh 12 percent three and three so it gives you a little bit of breakdown of of the the health status how many acts had to be pulled twice how many pulled three times based on on those different treatment groups so here we've got un unweened unknown health history versus those weaning and weanvac actually plotted a disease curve and all I did here was take the the the one weanvac group and plotted it against the control group and looked at how many pulls I had by day over time I want you to look at this disease curve so I started getting calves that were sick even by day two day three day four so it tells us if we think back to that incubation periods some place back here those calves were starting to get stress maybe it was just going through the auction market maybe it was just being pulled off the cow way back here someplace so I I've started building stress in those calves already and now by the time they get there they're pretty stressed they've been exposed at the sale barn and now I've got calves that are starting to get sick really early on okay let's compare that with the weanvac calves I got maybe one or so that was sick on day four day five I really never I got a little bit of a peak here but it just kind of trailed off had a few sick along here the point I want to make about this is remember the difference here these were unweened unvaccinated calves highly commingled these were weaned and vaccinated but they were also commingled we have to remember that is that these groups came in smaller groups and they're still commingled so we're seeing the effects of commingling here but it certainly doesn't reach the level of those that are commingled and not weaned and not vaccinated huge difference here in these peaks and what's interesting about this whole thing is that these two groups here they actually had BVD PI animals in it and there seemed to be some protection that was conferred simply by weaning those calves and getting them vaccinated before they went to the feed yard a really interesting portion of this study this is just looking at the death rate unweened unvaccinated calves 1.2 percent and those others kind of trailed behind them these calves here were four times more likely to die versus the calves in the in the weaned back program I also broke down this a little bit further and I looked at calves that were just sick at least one time versus those that were well that would never got sick 336 had here over 1000 had here in the in the group that was well average daily gain 3.07 versus 3.50 in the calves that remained healthy so it's not just the medicine expense but it's certainly a productivity issue here right it's health and productivity because these calves gain much better even those these remained healthy after being treated they never did quite catch up again so I'm going to share with you a report here of a of another case I had a number of years ago happened to be in South Dakota this is a picture of the operation here you can see a big lot and they had bale feeders out they had a bunk line back over here that you can't really see and then they had another bale feeder someplace over here and they so and what I'll give you the the history on these calves so these are five to six hundred weight calves approximately 400 had there were spring-born calves approximately six to eight months of age calves had been weaned into a common pan that's the one I just showed you by groups over a time period of four weeks beginning in late September and in the month of October approximately three to five weeks after the first group was weaned clinical signs of respiratory disease were observed number of calves 20 to 30 per day appeared ill and were treated and a small number died upon recommendation by the attending veterinarians the entire group was administered an antibiotic and boosted with two different vaccines the outbreak was slowed and two calves have died since the intervention so as this product failure these calves were vaccinated before weaning what's the real issue here I'm just going to use my marker to point this out to you here's here's the issue here calves were weaned had been weaned into a common pen by groups over a time period of four weeks that means they weren't all weaned at the same time they kept bringing more calves and more calves that were going through this weaning phase and putting them all together at the same time it was a different management strategy that they had done in the past and they were so busy with corn harvest they didn't get this thing managed properly typically they would weaned calves move them out to a different place and then bring in a new group which is what they should have been doing but corn harvest preempted everything and now they got in trouble with sick and dead calves and I might also point out going back to that first case report I gave you when you're bringing bulls from different sources bringing them into a bull testation it's commingling that's overwhelming everything it has nothing to do with the products the vaccine products that they're using just a quick little reminder about treatment schedules I want you to work with your veterinarian to develop treatment schedules for what condition you're treated what you're going to use for treatment what the dose is how to administer it and the withdrawal time work with your veterinarian on on these issues and this is just a reminder about treatment don't wait to see if cattle get better pull which means diagnose and treat sick cattle promptly don't treat the morning pulls in the in the afternoon or the afternoon pulls in the following morning treat as if it's life threatening follow those written treatment schedules and there may be times when you have a group of animals that have have to all receive medication at once we do this in more often in the stocker industry where we have high levels of commingling and transportation stress on those calves all at once so sometimes we'll use it on high risk animals when the expectation is that a significant number of percentage of the animals will become ill and sometimes we even have to use it in order to shut down an outbreak in our home raised home wing calves I hope that's not the case because we have managed those other risk categories that I talked about just a final reminder about veterinary feed directive when we use antibiotics in the feed this comes under the veterinary feed directive policy and it's just a permission slip basically written by your veterinarian that allows you to use medicated feed in livestock and we still use some of these medicated feeds today I would say the most common one we use today are the the tetracycline and in many cases it's a it's a drug called Oriamycin this is a quick easy way to determine how to fill out a veterinary feed directive for the veterinarian you can see up here as the veteran's name and address it has your client's name and address and it goes through the labels and the the directions for feeding of an animal so for example if I've got a group of calves that I believe are sick as a veterinarian and you come and we talk about it and I look at those calves I may need to treat those animals and that's as calves, beef and non-lactangularical dairy cattle for the treatment of bacterial anoritis which is diarrhea caused by E. coli or bacterial pneumonia caused by pastoral amultosity and I may need to treat them so I'm going to put an X here or checkmark and I'm going to let's say I'm going to use a top dress and I'm going to use the 10 at 10 milligrams per pound body weight which is the label dose and I'm going to use the 20,000 grams per ton okay which is 10 grams per pound product and then I'm going to finish that off by signing my name if I'm your veterinarian when I issued it I'm going to put in the number of cattle that I may need to be treated it might be 100 might be 400 and I might check one of these boxes if I'm using some other drug with it fairly easy fairly straightforward that a veterinarian can can utilize this to give you permission to use some of those feed additive antibiotics let me just finish up with a couple things here this was a kind of a survey that was done a number of years ago by cattle facts I want us to concentrate maybe down here someplace the question was a couple questions do you have a vet client patient relationship well I certainly hope so this is this NP stands for northern planes that's you and I yes it says 86 percent do I have a vaccination plan for a cow herd yes developed on my own 79 percent yes developed with my vet 17 percent um I'm hoping that's 100 percent I'm hoping that 100 percent of you will develop a vaccine protocol or plan for your cow herd and your calves with your veterinarian but maybe even more important regarding the use of antibiotics do you use antibiotics most will use some level of antibiotics where do you gather info about using antibiotics do I use it on advice from a veterinarian familiar with my cow herd 52 percent advice from a veterinarian familiar with my cow herd I want that to be 100 percent as all of you know we are under scrutiny these days for the use of antibiotics I want you to use your veterinarian to decide what you need to use when you use it how to use it what to use it for covered a lot of issues in this slide deck just want you to remember that the management equation when we're talking about health and productivity revolves around addressing all of these issues here in one way shape or form if I've had trouble try and identify which of these issues here is still causing you trouble as it relates to health and productivity thank you for listening if you have any questions you certainly can contact me either through email cell phone or through NDSU thank you