Summer can present a variety of challenges and stressors to beef cattle that can lead to bovine respiratory disease (BRD). Mitigating risk is a critical component of a larger BRD battle plan.

It’s time to work cattle. You’ve gotten the vaccines and all you have to do is load syringes and you’re good to go, right? 

Since the purchase price of calves is currently high, there can be a wide price spread between the purchase price of cattle that came from a good vaccination and health program versus cattle that have not.

Over recent decades, cattle disease management, prevention and treatment have changed dramatically. Vaccines, antibiotics, technology and even diseases have altered course.

Summertime brings in the warmer weather and, with it, a different set of stressors for cattle. A number of factors can lead to stress in cattle, including fluctuations in temperature or adverse weather conditions.

For almost 100 years, cattle producers in the West experienced an awful phenomenon: large numbers of strange, late-term abortions in otherwise healthy cattle. What caused these abortions, and what can producers do to avoid this loss?

All animals face constant changes and challenges to their health. The maintenance of a healthy homeostatic state within the gut is important, not only to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, but it also can affect such diverse systems such as the respiratory and reproductive system. We also know that it can affect the brain and the skin health as well. The GI tract and remote organs in the body share bidirectional communication via immune, neural, endocrine or metabolic links called the “gut-organ axis.”

Have you, or a cattle producer friend, ever encountered a situation where you vaccinated your cow herd against rotavirus scours but still had problems with rotavirus scours? What about experiencing a Histophilus somni (H. somni) break in pens of vaccinated feedlot calves? Or Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis)? Or pinkeye?

Vaccine products that are administered to cattle are foreign to the animal’s body. The goal is for the body to recognize these foreign organisms and develop an immune response for protection in the event of a future disease challenge.

From the moment a calf is born, the clock starts ticking in the battle against bovine respiratory disease (BRD). One of the things we try to promote as veterinarians is making sure that we stay ahead of it. BRD is the costliest disease in the cattle industry and can have serious impacts on an animal’s production potential.