Calf vaccination before weaning

Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Elanco Author

08/27/2021 Added

25 Plays

Description

Dr. Hoffman discusses why we vaccinate calves prior to weaning and how we as an industry are doing at the 2021 GSL Open House.

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[00:00:01.939](gentle upbeat music)
[00:00:08.000]Two things, when you get the spot right after lunch,
[00:00:10.350]they either don't like you.
[00:00:12.575](audience laughs) Great.
[00:00:13.680]Or they think you're really good and you'll keep everybody
[00:00:16.260]from falling asleep.
[00:00:17.550]So I like to walk a lot.
[00:00:18.930]I apologize to the cameraman back there.
[00:00:22.200]He'll just have to tough it out, right?
[00:00:23.840]But the reality is one thing I learned in vet school,
[00:00:27.880]I've forgotten, I graduated from Colorado State
[00:00:30.170]30 years ago this spring.
[00:00:31.890]And I tell my kids, I can't believe how old they're getting.
[00:00:34.700]'Cause I'm still the same age as I was
[00:00:36.390]when I got out of vet school, right?
[00:00:37.970]And yet I learned that the parasympathetic
[00:00:41.960]and sympathetic nervous systems,
[00:00:43.960]the parasympathetic is the thing that controls your guts.
[00:00:47.230]And so after we eat, guess what?
[00:00:50.390]Your arms and your...
[00:00:52.250]The focus changes to digest and food, is that right, Zack?
[00:00:56.870]I think I'm right on that, right?
[00:00:58.457]And I got other veterinarians,
[00:00:59.690]a lot of veterinarians in the room today
[00:01:01.220]and then people a lot smarter than me.
[00:01:03.740]But that means, guess what?
[00:01:05.860]We fall asleep after we eat, right?
[00:01:07.890]And so my challenge is either
[00:01:10.180]to make sure that I'm exciting enough
[00:01:13.640]and interesting enough that you don't fall asleep,
[00:01:17.250]or if you do, I embarrass the hell out of you
[00:01:20.770]by calling on you if you fall asleep.
[00:01:23.800]That's kind of where I'm at on that.
[00:01:26.240]I'm from Billings, Montana.
[00:01:27.800]I've been with Elanco for eight years.
[00:01:29.930]I am really impressed with what's been presented today.
[00:01:33.700]And a lot of programs I'm on, we're talking about vaccines,
[00:01:36.620]we're talking about cattle health all the time.
[00:01:39.260]One of the things that struck me this morning, Jason's
[00:01:42.440]you know, veterinary medicine.
[00:01:44.410]We can think we're pretty specialist veterinarians,
[00:01:46.240]but we're 4% of your operation, right?
[00:01:49.120]How come you guys bitched the loudest for how?
[00:01:51.520]I mean we're only 4%.
[00:01:52.850]And then you guys complain that you don't want to pay us,
[00:01:54.840]and we cost too much, really?
[00:01:56.415](audience laughs)
[00:01:57.248]Come on.
[00:01:58.081]Get focused on your help and your depreciation.
[00:02:00.280]Okay? (audience laughs)
[00:02:01.550]And your nutritionist, 'cause I mean, they're great.
[00:02:04.390]So I can go on, on, on, on, I've had a unique career.
[00:02:08.810]My wife always bugs me and says,
[00:02:10.167]"When are you going to become a real veterinarian?"
[00:02:12.950]I actually was, I was in practice for two years
[00:02:15.770]and through various episodes with clients and their pets,
[00:02:20.410]it was best decided that I not continue to work
[00:02:23.310]on small animals.
[00:02:25.540]I won't go there at this point with that.
[00:02:28.690]Luckily, the statute of limitations is ended
[00:02:31.090]and I'm no longer sought after in the state of Minnesota.
[00:02:35.663](audience laughs) But since then
[00:02:37.350]I've been a cow veterinarian.
[00:02:38.640]And many of you, I've worked a lot over my career.
[00:02:42.387]Has started out doing consulting work with Dr. Del Miles,
[00:02:45.780]VRCS, across the state of Nebraska.
[00:02:48.290]Jim Sears and I practiced together out of Hyannis,
[00:02:53.970]I think he's retired at Hyannis.
[00:02:55.340]But I started there, and then one day,
[00:03:00.100]one of my clients in California,
[00:03:02.210]Dave Wood, part of Harris Ranch Feeding Company said,
[00:03:05.607]"Hey Bruce, I bet you're tired of traveling."
[00:03:07.580]I had some young kids at home and, and I said, "I am."
[00:03:10.730]He said, "Do you want to be home every night?"
[00:03:13.660]And I'm like, and I talked to my wife about this.
[00:03:15.660]I said, "I've never been to California."
[00:03:17.500]I hadn't been there while I'd been consulting there.
[00:03:19.390]But you know, it's crazy to think about moving there,
[00:03:22.610]but I thought that sounded pretty good.
[00:03:23.950]And I want to tell you, and if Dave Wood's listening,
[00:03:26.300]I want to say, thank you, Dave.
[00:03:27.710]I was home every night for approximately five hours.
[00:03:31.559](audience laughs)
[00:03:33.010]I put in, in that five years, I managed
[00:03:35.870]a hundred thousand head feeding company.
[00:03:37.760]We had 70,000 mama cows that fed calves in that system.
[00:03:41.960]We had a packing plant that killed 1200 head a day
[00:03:44.500]and a restaurant that we featured the beef in, right?
[00:03:47.480]And so like I think you're close to that number, right?
[00:03:51.940]Okay. (audience laughs)
[00:03:54.260]I learned a lot and it has impacted my career tremendously
[00:03:58.880]being a part of having a consumer
[00:04:02.020]that close to the operation I was.
[00:04:04.510]And just understanding the role of health, beef,
[00:04:10.020]perception versus fact.
[00:04:13.650]And so we live in a dynamic industry
[00:04:16.610]and man, I love it.
[00:04:17.600]I love the challenge, but I think some things
[00:04:20.160]that we've heard this morning,
[00:04:21.520]we still have plenty of challenges, right?
[00:04:23.600]But let's keep laughing.
[00:04:24.710]Let's keep having fun on it.
[00:04:26.360]And let's keep sharing information.
[00:04:28.440]Now what I'm going to share today,
[00:04:33.050]is not, I mean, I may create some controversy
[00:04:36.200]with some of my veterinary friends and some people
[00:04:38.310]that I work closely.
[00:04:39.398]Elanco, we're excited to be a company
[00:04:41.950]that's sponsoring this today.
[00:04:43.570]We're excited to have a lot of products that fit.
[00:04:46.760]But I have a phrase that I've used
[00:04:48.850]that Dr. Del Miles taught me that I have used
[00:04:51.310]in my career called management over medicine.
[00:04:54.830]I've changed that a little more about,
[00:04:57.180]it's called program over product.
[00:05:01.490]There is no product that I'm aware of that's gonna
[00:05:05.310]create a perfectly healthy calf or a great beef product.
[00:05:10.890]It's about management, it's about program.
[00:05:13.510]And so I'm gonna to show you some of the things that
[00:05:16.300]I'm seeing some of the data around calf vaccination
[00:05:18.850]that I'm concerned about.
[00:05:20.370]And I'll be honest, one of my biased
[00:05:23.100]that I learned from Harris Ranch.
[00:05:25.130]As a feedlot consultant,
[00:05:27.300]where do we get to make the decisions?
[00:05:29.850]And you can yell some out, you know, to stay awake.
[00:05:33.770]If you need to just blurt something out,
[00:05:35.560]Dr. Tim's about ready to blurt something out at me, right?
[00:05:40.870]Where do we get to make it on a feed yard?
[00:05:43.620]Cattle come in, what do we get to decide?
[00:05:48.400]Yup, are they going to get sick?
[00:05:50.067]The good cattle, bad cattle.
[00:05:51.710]High-risk, low-risk give them antibiotic on arrival
[00:05:54.310]and give vaccine on arrival.
[00:05:55.610]I have no ability in that system to impact
[00:05:59.400]what happened the day before they got the feed yard, right?
[00:06:01.900]Is that fair?
[00:06:03.980]My bias, what I learned as far as at Harris Feeding Company,
[00:06:08.840]being a manager and having that same decision,
[00:06:13.460]but I had a big impact on the ranch.
[00:06:17.530]And I'll be honest with you.
[00:06:18.670]The changes that I made at that feed yard were all based,
[00:06:23.210]most of them, based on what I did working with the ranch.
[00:06:28.170]So the ranch community is extremely important
[00:06:33.180]in what I'm gonna show you.
[00:06:35.290]And so sometimes I,
[00:06:37.560]how many of you have fed your calves out?
[00:06:40.140]Know what your calves do when they leave the ranch,
[00:06:42.670]go to a feed yard?
[00:06:43.840]How many?
[00:06:46.660]Few of you?
[00:06:48.220]Not many do though, right?
[00:06:51.360]Some people I asked the question, I said, do you care?
[00:06:53.860]Heck no. Next guys deal, I've made them perfect.
[00:06:56.450]Never had a sick one.
[00:06:57.470]I'm sure they never will have a sick one at feedlot.
[00:06:59.840]You know, if you've fed your own cattle,
[00:07:03.320]it's a humbling experience.
[00:07:05.040]The first time, you know, you send them to the ranches,
[00:07:07.680]send them to me at Harris' Ranch Feeding Company.
[00:07:09.810]First time I had 30% poles, 10% death loss on their cattle.
[00:07:13.820]What's their first reaction when I call them?
[00:07:16.747]"You son of a buck, I bet you fed them corn."
[00:07:19.634](audience laughs)
[00:07:21.520]We did that one other time and it killed them.
[00:07:23.510]We fed two pounds a day, one time.
[00:07:25.250]Boy, we'd darn near lost them, right?
[00:07:28.210]They don't understand, they're mad, right?
[00:07:30.490]So they send them in another feed yard, guess what?
[00:07:32.518]they're just as bad as the first one, right?
[00:07:35.510]They only killed 8% this year.
[00:07:37.380]About the third year it takes before they realize
[00:07:42.700]that we can actually affect the immunity,
[00:07:45.230]that there may be something that we're doing,
[00:07:48.030]as a rancher, maybe fetal programming,
[00:07:49.840]maybe not feeding our cows correctly through the winter,
[00:07:51.830]maybe nutrition aspect, maybe environment,
[00:07:54.450]maybe water, right?
[00:07:56.150]Maybe handling, stress.
[00:07:57.810]We work a lot with animal handling within our company.
[00:08:00.660]And that's a big part of how we handle calves.
[00:08:03.300]So it's really, I know I'm stressing now probably more
[00:08:07.490]than I intended to, but it's so important
[00:08:09.960]what you do and the immunity you develop
[00:08:12.980]on that ranch before we get to the feed yard.
[00:08:16.600]So why do we vaccinate calves for BRD?
[00:08:20.790]I have a few listed here.
[00:08:23.310]Steers marketing.
[00:08:24.820]We were showing earlier.
[00:08:26.810]I think Elliot showed some numbers as far as the value
[00:08:29.270]of value added calves, right?
[00:08:31.150]That have vaccinations.
[00:08:33.720]So we know superior livestock back in,
[00:08:36.900]I think 2001 data, showed that there was, I think,
[00:08:42.820]what percentage of it was?
[00:08:44.210]It was like 60% of the lots were only vaccinated
[00:08:47.210]with a Clostridial 7-Way.
[00:08:50.360]What percentage of,
[00:08:51.790]and those lots, like I said, those lots were not given
[00:08:56.130]a respiratory vaccine.
[00:08:57.960]Today, how many of you, what percentage of spirit lots
[00:09:01.150]don't have a respiratory vaccine.
[00:09:03.440]It's like less than 1%.
[00:09:04.870]I mean, it's close to zero.
[00:09:07.310]So we've seen the value we're trying, right?
[00:09:09.370]Health, summer pneumonia.
[00:09:11.110]Some of you experience pneumonia pre-weaning, right?
[00:09:14.640]So we may vaccinate and target different diseases
[00:09:17.490]because we have some pneumonia on the ranch.
[00:09:20.330]I'm one of those veterinarians that says, if we have,
[00:09:23.300]I mean, you guys live in Nebraska, right?
[00:09:25.690]I mean, I live in Montana.
[00:09:27.480]I actually go big red because Montana was all red
[00:09:32.100]on that drought map, right?
[00:09:33.690]I mean, it's like, I drive a red pickup.
[00:09:35.500]I feel pretty good.
[00:09:37.604]When I went to work for Herb Bowers, he says,
[00:09:38.927]"You know, I'm going to pay a Coloradan to be my consultant
[00:09:41.610]on one condition."
[00:09:43.830]I said, "What's that Herb?"
[00:09:44.680]He said, "I got a Nebraska go big red license plate
[00:09:48.330]to put around your Colorado.
[00:09:49.820]If you'd put that on your pickup,
[00:09:52.070]I'll hire you as a consultant."
[00:09:53.340]So I did that because I was desperate for money.
[00:09:55.793]So health, summer Pneumonia.
[00:09:59.250]Heifers, why do we vaccinate? Same thing.
[00:10:02.010]Marketing for health.
[00:10:03.500]Heifers, we also,
[00:10:05.430]and Becky's gonna talk a little bit about that.
[00:10:08.180]Remember, what are we trying to do with the heifer?
[00:10:10.070]We may sell some of those,
[00:10:11.250]but we're trying to prepare that heifer to be a cow, right?
[00:10:14.450]So how do we,
[00:10:15.307]you know, that program might be a little bit different
[00:10:17.480]as we prepare that animal to go into our cow herd,
[00:10:20.040]because what's the most important thing
[00:10:22.200]that we can do as a rancher, right?
[00:10:25.060]We gotta get a calf on the ground.
[00:10:26.636]We got to get a cow bred.
[00:10:27.717]We gotta get a calf on the ground, right?
[00:10:29.013]I mean, we can talk about weaning weights, all you want.
[00:10:31.640]I know a lot of people that have gone broke
[00:10:33.720]that have had the biggest calves ever.
[00:10:37.485]You got to have a lot of them
[00:10:38.440]Harris, We followed some bull one time,
[00:10:40.500]the best genetic, the best bull we ever had.
[00:10:43.560]Carcass, he was like $700 premium.
[00:10:47.520]We were doing all this genetic stuff.
[00:10:49.300]Guess how many cows reproduced?
[00:10:51.590]Three, right?
[00:10:53.931]And they kept using them
[00:10:55.500]instead of locking them up and jacking them up.
[00:10:57.540]I mean, excuse me, the jacking, whatever.
[00:10:59.780]Sorry, sometimes I get a little casual,
[00:11:01.130]so throw something at me.
[00:11:03.830]How are we doing?
[00:11:05.160]What do you think?
[00:11:06.680]So if I evaluate health and BRD,
[00:11:09.620]remember BRD is still our number one deal.
[00:11:12.710]Scott, today we were talking,
[00:11:14.480]he said he had BRD when he got out of vet school
[00:11:17.230]and he hadn't solved it either in 30 years,
[00:11:19.860]it's still a problem, biggest problem.
[00:11:23.400]How are we doing if we evaluate death loss from fed cattle?
[00:11:28.706]So we can say, "Well, I don't have any part of that."
[00:11:31.610]But yes, you do because you start these cattle.
[00:11:34.820]We all do as, as on the ranch.
[00:11:36.620]What do you think we're doing?
[00:11:37.560]Is death loss in the last 20 years?
[00:11:39.690]Is it getting better?
[00:11:42.180]I mean, we've got the best products, right?
[00:11:43.630]You see some of the products around here,
[00:11:45.610]new vaccines, new feed additives, new a lot of stuff, right?
[00:11:50.370]So is it getting better?
[00:11:52.520]And this data comes from Elanco's benchmark system
[00:11:55.600]where we monitor about 4 to 5 million head.
[00:11:58.800]It's about 40% of the fed cattle every year that we monitor.
[00:12:02.210]So this is a US look.
[00:12:05.750]We're getting better, staying flat, getting worse.
[00:12:08.480]What do you think?
[00:12:09.930]Worse, I hear.
[00:12:11.080]You must've fed cattle recently, right?
[00:12:12.890]You have cattle on feed.
[00:12:14.900]Anybody else?
[00:12:15.980]Any optimists in here?
[00:12:17.710]Saying we're getting better?
[00:12:22.170]I would say that line is going up to the right.
[00:12:25.810]And I would say this death loss is getting higher.
[00:12:31.090]And so pink is heifers.
[00:12:34.260]Finally, you know, women are beating us at something.
[00:12:38.500]Sorry, I shouldn't say that.
[00:12:40.160]That's not good.
[00:12:43.877]But it's going up, right?
[00:12:45.260]We've had a few decreases, but the general trend.
[00:12:49.830]And this is a 1997 through 2018.
[00:12:53.890]And 2019, we went up 2020, we're up.
[00:12:58.610]So we're up here substantially higher, right?
[00:13:03.290]Why is that?
[00:13:04.440]And weight classes on this side is all weight classes.
[00:13:08.140]So obviously five weights, you know, lighter the calf,
[00:13:12.340]the higher death loss, higher risk, right?
[00:13:14.670]But I think Elliot talked about eight weights.
[00:13:18.900]Back when I first started consulting and I started in 1992,
[00:13:23.460]there is a flat spot here.
[00:13:24.950]I was consulting from about 2002 to about 2009
[00:13:30.450]where it stayed flat.
[00:13:31.290]But then when I got out of consulting,
[00:13:32.710]it went to hell again, right?
[00:13:34.000]So you guys can start throwing something at me, if you want.
[00:13:37.810]It's all about keeping you awake.
[00:13:39.350]But even we used to think that we on eight weights, right?
[00:13:43.740]I mean, he said eight weights are not that big of a risk.
[00:13:46.270]We used to think we could never get higher
[00:13:48.560]and a half a percent death loss, right?
[00:13:51.540]Look at eight weights, on there.
[00:13:54.780]We're up to one and a half percent death loss
[00:13:57.790]and eight weights, right?
[00:13:58.623]On cattle that are supposed to be started,
[00:14:00.470]cattle that are supposed to be BRD free.
[00:14:02.850]We're not supposed to have any issues.
[00:14:04.690]Now vaccination is not the only part.
[00:14:07.320]I am not going, I do not want you leaving saying
[00:14:09.930]if we just used Elanco vaccine or Merck vaccine
[00:14:13.430]or whatever vaccine, we're going to be awesome, right?
[00:14:16.100]It's a program approach.
[00:14:17.380]So there's multiple things here, but I think it is something
[00:14:20.420]as far as developing a calf immune system,
[00:14:23.310]I think we're learning some things.
[00:14:25.680]And so I'm going to show you three studies
[00:14:29.600]that have been published recently that really
[00:14:33.810]have gotten me intrigued
[00:14:35.600]because one of the things that I started doing
[00:14:37.420]at Harris Ranch was,
[00:14:39.050]and even I got in a lot of trouble still today
[00:14:42.210]with my mentor Del.
[00:14:43.810]And he's still doing some yards here in Nebraska,
[00:14:45.600]Del's 80, 81.
[00:14:47.800]And you know,
[00:14:49.360]I'm a heretic because I did something
[00:14:51.420]that I did not vaccinate calf
[00:14:52.900]when they came into the feed yard.
[00:14:54.112](gasps) Oh my gosh,
[00:14:55.580]you didn't process within 24 hours.
[00:14:57.330]So I started doing some delayed vaccination.
[00:14:59.570]I started doing some minimal vaccination programs.
[00:15:02.570]Because of what I knew they had at the ranch.
[00:15:05.580]But today the standard operating procedure
[00:15:08.840]is still at a feed yards.
[00:15:10.410]We process within what?
[00:15:13.500]24 to 36 hours.
[00:15:15.060]It would be rare for me to go to a major feeder.
[00:15:18.840]And I'm not saying it's not happening.
[00:15:20.150]Maybe some of you are doing it.
[00:15:22.350]And not have that happen.
[00:15:24.010]My backgrounders now that I work with
[00:15:25.930]and a lot of the veterinarians,
[00:15:28.050]if we know history, if we work on working with ranches,
[00:15:31.180]guess what?
[00:15:32.140]We don't process, okay?
[00:15:34.240]We don't process those calves for a lot of times, two weeks.
[00:15:37.090]Work with your veterinarian.
[00:15:37.923]We've got great veterinarians in this room.
[00:15:40.430]Work with them to understand how your calves
[00:15:43.610]best need to be processed.
[00:15:44.900]But too many shots, when VRCS looked at this down in Kansas,
[00:15:49.910]in a lot of their deal.
[00:15:50.800]Cow administered a modified-live-vaccine three times
[00:15:53.680]before the feedlot had a greater chance
[00:15:57.620]for respiratory disease.
[00:15:59.620]Right?
[00:16:00.500]That doesn't makes sense.
[00:16:01.540]Hold on, what do you mean?
[00:16:02.390]More shots should be better.
[00:16:04.380]Not so sure.
[00:16:06.520]And one of the things remember on this data,
[00:16:09.420]they added up a modified,
[00:16:10.930]or whether it went up the nose where there went
[00:16:12.780]under the skin, it was all modified-lives together.
[00:16:17.320]Cattle that had three shots.
[00:16:18.610]They didn't have a lot of data on four shots,
[00:16:21.090]those were neutral.
[00:16:22.300]They didn't have a lot of cattle on that way.
[00:16:23.780]So that's one thing, too many shots.
[00:16:25.900]I mean, more shots had better than like a single shot
[00:16:29.750]or one shot.
[00:16:32.890]There's great, oops.
[00:16:34.730]The other things, what on there.
[00:16:36.140]There's more variability and morbidity
[00:16:39.250]among cow-calf operations.
[00:16:41.080]Greater number of vaccinations administrative
[00:16:42.940]for the feedlot was detrimental to health outcomes.
[00:16:46.910]So I'm a veterinarian for Elanco, I get called out for
[00:16:50.740]maybe some people that are having challenges
[00:16:52.750]with use of a product, right?
[00:16:54.500]Which operations do I see more of?
[00:16:58.840]A lot of them it's the people that are using tons
[00:17:02.990]of vaccines or tons of products, right.
[00:17:05.410]Using more is not necessarily just the right answer.
[00:17:11.015]The whole business of saying, "I'm going to use it
[00:17:13.560]because I want insurance," may not be the best approach.
[00:17:18.560]Now it may be working for you and your operations.
[00:17:21.110]And hopefully, you know, the ones that you've followed
[00:17:24.070]your calves to the feedlot, you haven't had sickness,
[00:17:26.730]you haven't had death loss, like I'm showing.
[00:17:29.680]Hopefully you can say,
[00:17:30.513]"Well, that must be those South Dakota.
[00:17:32.220]Well, maybe that's Montana kids, but that don't happen
[00:17:34.530]here in Nebraska."
[00:17:37.340]Second study: Good ranch calves.
[00:17:40.090]How many of you think you have good ranch calves.
[00:17:43.760]Accept your neighbor, right?
[00:17:45.550]'Cause you all live next to somebody that has shitty cows.
[00:17:48.850]I'm to guarantee you.
[00:17:50.230]And when they invite you to these meetings like this,
[00:17:52.160]your neighbor never comes, right?
[00:17:54.340]That way you don't have to sit next to them and admit.
[00:17:57.890]'Cause I hear that all time,
[00:17:58.957]"Yeah, man, I got a neighbor.
[00:18:00.380]He buys those cattle from South Dakota,
[00:18:02.230]brings them in and we always have problems."
[00:18:05.010]Because they always come from your neighbors operation,
[00:18:08.030]but morbidity of high-performing cattle, right?
[00:18:11.510]So when I started, when many of them,
[00:18:13.150]when I first moved to Montana,
[00:18:14.450]I grew up in Indiana, moved to Montana,
[00:18:16.720]My father-in-law had heifers, right?
[00:18:18.560]How many heifers do we see around?
[00:18:19.920]Nothing to beat up heifers.
[00:18:21.490]But what breed of cattle
[00:18:23.480]do we basically have in the United States?
[00:18:25.900]Black, right?
[00:18:26.790]So there could be some issues like high-performing cattle,
[00:18:30.440]none of the breed associations follow health.
[00:18:33.450]I don't know if any of you are part of it,
[00:18:34.620]but I get frustrated cause we follow performance,
[00:18:36.960]but we don't follow health associated with those.
[00:18:39.040]And I'll guarantee you,
[00:18:40.810]we have some issues with some lines of cattle.
[00:18:44.950]And so I think that's part of it,
[00:18:47.240]but the timing of BRD occurs later.
[00:18:50.160]What we're seeing is that used to be,
[00:18:51.980]if I bought sale barn cattle, co-mingled cattle in the yard.
[00:18:55.120]When did they get sick?
[00:18:57.670]So I bought them out of pick your favorite sale barn
[00:18:59.650]where you can buy cattle 15 bucks back and make money.
[00:19:03.190]I brought them in the yard, when were they getting sick?
[00:19:06.870]They start getting sick right after I got the dead one
[00:19:09.520]drug off the truck.
[00:19:10.751](audience laughs) Right? Right?
[00:19:11.680]I mean, it was immediately, right?
[00:19:12.850]They were already incubating disease.
[00:19:14.300]They were already dying.
[00:19:17.355]Ranch calves, I brought them in, when did they get sick?
[00:19:20.240]If I knew I got good, fresh ranch calves,
[00:19:22.130]when did they get sick?
[00:19:25.100]Or they didn't if they were good ranch calves,
[00:19:27.080]if they weren't your neighbors, right?
[00:19:28.850]They were good ranch calves.
[00:19:30.330]But they got sick routinely two to three weeks, right?
[00:19:34.500]They didn't break for two to three weeks.
[00:19:36.860]Now we're seeing the steer where they may not break it all.
[00:19:40.750]But out there 40 to 60 days on feed, or even later,
[00:19:44.930]we're seeing pretty classic respiratory lesions.
[00:19:48.570]And some of it, we're seeing heart,
[00:19:50.100]Brian, he spends a lot of time
[00:19:55.440]talking about the heart lesions, right?
[00:19:57.380]And so there's that phenomenon
[00:19:58.900]that we don't really understand.
[00:20:00.770]And we really need,
[00:20:01.680]I'm a passionate guy about necropsy.
[00:20:03.840]If you're not necropsy.
[00:20:06.150]Working with your vet to help,
[00:20:07.860]what determined why are my animals dying?
[00:20:10.150]I think that's a critical thing we need to continue to do.
[00:20:12.760]But so good ranch calves, we're seeing still problems
[00:20:16.240]on those best ranch calves.
[00:20:18.260]The problem is occurring later in the feeding period.
[00:20:21.260]This latest one is, you know, what's the effect of timing?
[00:20:25.570]And you're going to be talking a little bit
[00:20:27.200]about timing, on the cows,
[00:20:29.090]but on the calves, I think we're learning more about that.
[00:20:32.130]And what Dr. Richardson says when he's reviewed the deal
[00:20:35.190]to be a effective vaccination against respiratory disease
[00:20:38.500]should be administered weeks before an infectious challenge.
[00:20:45.010]What?
[00:20:46.150]Feedlot arrival?
[00:20:47.050]I mean, when do vaccinate cattle?
[00:20:52.240]Branding!
[00:20:53.073]When we're stressing them at branding.
[00:20:54.090]When we're stressing them at weaning.
[00:20:57.261]We know that we've all been taught that,
[00:20:59.640]we still do it, and we're like expecting
[00:21:01.530]doing something the same, expecting different results.
[00:21:04.830]And preconditioning.
[00:21:06.440]I mean, I could talk a lot about preconditioning.
[00:21:11.090]It's not the end-all.
[00:21:13.660]We've done a lot of data was saying preconditioning
[00:21:16.125]in the Western environment,
[00:21:17.660]Right now in Montana, I've run into herds
[00:21:20.240]that we have more issues with preconditioned calves.
[00:21:22.870]And there's some of my feedlot colleagues that say,
[00:21:25.587]"I don't want to buy a preconditioned calves.
[00:21:27.570]They're worse than if I buy a one-shot calf."
[00:21:31.810]But when I think of preconditioning,
[00:21:33.330]sometimes I know ranches that, I just had one,
[00:21:36.330]they said we brought them in and we preconditioned them
[00:21:40.520]and we left them all.
[00:21:41.560]They brought them in from big country,
[00:21:42.990]so what's our greatest health deals spread them out, right?
[00:21:47.290]That's why the sandhills are so awesome, right?
[00:21:49.610]I mean, they're spread out.
[00:21:50.870]We don't have a lot of disease,
[00:21:52.600]but what did we do in Montana or whatever?
[00:21:54.180]We brought them in.
[00:21:55.220]We had them on five sections.
[00:21:57.460]We brought them in to a half section
[00:21:59.570]and rather than kick them back out,
[00:22:01.370]we left them in a half section for the next two weeks.
[00:22:04.240]Or we sold them on superior as preconditioned,
[00:22:08.380]two shots before.
[00:22:09.260]And I didn't get around to it.
[00:22:10.966]And so I happened to do it two days before I shipped them.
[00:22:15.150]They're sold as preconditioned.
[00:22:16.490]They show up the sale barn or the feed yard
[00:22:18.817]and we don't know any better, they're just preconditioned.
[00:22:21.890]And so the timing of this is extremely important.
[00:22:25.330]And so I think we need to rethink this
[00:22:27.190]on how we're going to do the best,
[00:22:29.700]and how does that fit in?
[00:22:31.260]And I'm really, I'm a minimalist,
[00:22:32.780]I think we need, I'm not the one that says
[00:22:35.420]you need to start pulling in your calves every two weeks
[00:22:37.780]and vaccinating or whatever, that's not the answer.
[00:22:39.590]The answer is thinking about your operation.
[00:22:41.870]How does the whole vaccination fit in?
[00:22:45.240]The other thing that's interesting is
[00:22:47.450]we used to think we did no harm.
[00:22:51.500]Processing cattle.
[00:22:52.360]Trust me, I've seen enough processing crews to know that
[00:22:55.310]even if we weren't giving a shot, they were doing harm,
[00:22:57.560]but how they were handling cattle.
[00:23:00.290]And trust me the phone.
[00:23:03.000]I don't care where you're at in Nebraska or Montana.
[00:23:05.990]I challenged our ranchers.
[00:23:07.430]I challenge everybody I work with was saying,
[00:23:10.300]are you comfortable with one of your employees
[00:23:12.680]or somebody driving by the rode,
[00:23:14.650]takes out a video and show and records
[00:23:17.240]what you're doing working cattle and with sound.
[00:23:20.000]That means your dog's barking.
[00:23:21.710]You're screaming at your wife
[00:23:23.680]'cause she didn't get the gate shut quick enough.
[00:23:26.170]All those things that somebody that doesn't know
[00:23:28.320]about our business would be comfortable
[00:23:30.780]with what we're doing, right?
[00:23:32.710]Just something to think about.
[00:23:34.100]And the reality is, we want to make sure we do no harm.
[00:23:38.510]And yet some of the things with the modified-lives
[00:23:41.390]and I'm a modified-live guy.
[00:23:43.530]But they may be causing some challenges that
[00:23:46.500]isn't beneficial to animals that are already immunized
[00:23:49.510]and anybody who heard of COVID.
[00:23:51.465](audience laughs)
[00:23:52.598]You know, I really think
[00:23:53.480]we need a feedlot consultant with Dr. Fauci.
[00:23:56.170]I mean, I think I have more to offer some days
[00:23:58.510]just being biased, right?
[00:24:00.890]High-risk cattle, high-risk people, vaccination.
[00:24:03.100]We've been doing it, I've been doing it for 30 years.
[00:24:05.240]And I have a lot to say on that.
[00:24:07.110]Have me come back next year and I'll talk about it.
[00:24:09.000]But the reality is would we go
[00:24:13.050]and I don't care what you believe on vaccination.
[00:24:16.270]But would you go into your doctor and get vaccinated
[00:24:20.120]if you were feeling like crappola
[00:24:22.170]you just got done with three days in the baler
[00:24:24.110]trying to get hay up.
[00:24:25.390]You're stressed out, you know, your wife's been on you.
[00:24:27.690]Haven't eaten properly.
[00:24:28.730]You haven't gotten enough sleep.
[00:24:29.900]You sick from whatever,
[00:24:31.990]would you go on and get vaccinated?
[00:24:33.770]Probably not, right?
[00:24:35.990]And so I think we gotta think about that,
[00:24:37.770]some of these cattle.
[00:24:39.117]We've always said we're better off doing it.
[00:24:43.050]We did a study with Nuplura years ago and I was scared
[00:24:46.100]because they were Southeastern cattle that I didn't know
[00:24:48.680]if they had a vaccination or not.
[00:24:51.680]And we did not give them a viral vaccination on rival
[00:24:55.640]and guess what?
[00:24:56.473]That was actually the best performing cattle
[00:24:58.370]we had in that study.
[00:24:59.480]So some of my paradigms don't always hold true.
[00:25:03.710]And then the other thing is when we licensed vaccines,
[00:25:06.620]when we worked through USDA, different companies,
[00:25:08.934]we create models and some of those models
[00:25:12.180]may not always be what cattle are actually exposed to
[00:25:16.150]in the real world.
[00:25:18.974]I mean those are three studies.
[00:25:21.730]And one of the things, intranasal, I add that in,
[00:25:23.996]because a lot of the additional modified-lives
[00:25:27.150]in these numbers come from.
[00:25:28.650]We're using intranasal is more.
[00:25:30.600]I've been using them my whole career and like anything,
[00:25:33.400]I think we gotta be careful as far as, do we go excess?
[00:25:39.600]Because I'm still a fan.
[00:25:41.650]I want long-term immunity when those calves get to me
[00:25:45.600]in the feed yard.
[00:25:47.500]And I'm not going to debate,
[00:25:48.610]you know, we have different companies here.
[00:25:51.200]and I'm not gonna debate the role,
[00:25:53.430]but anything in excess I'm convinced is not a good thing.
[00:25:56.910]The thing is that I'm seeing start,
[00:25:59.145]when we blow something up nose and we change the commensal,
[00:26:02.540]meaning what's in that upper respiratory tract already.
[00:26:06.010]And we put something else in there
[00:26:08.120]and that changes that environment.
[00:26:10.000]That's doing more than just
[00:26:11.180]providing immunity for that deal.
[00:26:12.640]So I'm just asking you to think through them.
[00:26:15.250]And I've been involved in several things recently
[00:26:18.190]over the last couple of years that
[00:26:20.270]we've seen some more Haemophilus show up.
[00:26:22.620]The role of interferon as far as feed intake
[00:26:25.870]and things happening like that with that.
[00:26:28.930]And so when we're adding that to an injectable vaccine,
[00:26:31.840]and then we're using autogenous for pinkeye,
[00:26:33.370]we're using, we need a bacteria on there
[00:26:36.608]to address the Mannheimia.
[00:26:38.950]Think about all that stuff and how it's, hopefully,
[00:26:41.870]benefiting the cattle and not hurting us.
[00:26:47.910]So with that,
[00:26:49.250]am I over?
[00:26:50.970]I'm right on, luckily.
[00:26:52.120]So think about that, I'm going to be around.
[00:26:54.050]So if you have questions, I'll stick around.
[00:26:57.280]I want to learn how to preg check.
[00:26:58.720]So Rick, thanks.
[00:27:00.520]So I want to make-
[00:27:02.140]There you are.
[00:27:02.973]Okay, sorry.
[00:27:04.278]You just gotta love a guy up gets.
[00:27:08.000]You guys, aren't gonna invite me back next year.
[00:27:09.580]I got it, well, that's all right, that's all right.
[00:27:10.960]You're all welcome to come to Montana.
[00:27:13.890]But the reality is I don't want,
[00:27:16.494]my whole idea was to say, let's look past the ranch
[00:27:20.160]because really,
[00:27:22.480]you don't know how immune, you know, your calves are,
[00:27:27.270]unless you've fallen them off the ranch.
[00:27:30.220]I'm pretty comfortable saying that.
[00:27:32.240]And there was a lot of calves, I mean,
[00:27:33.360]I've had calves that have never been vaccinated.
[00:27:35.620]That never missed a lick coming into feed yard.
[00:27:39.100]It's rare.
[00:27:41.290]I can not vaccinate calves out in the ranch
[00:27:43.690]and get along pretty good in a lot of environments,
[00:27:46.490]but we can't, in general, going into feed yard
[00:27:50.250]when they're going to be commingled and exposed to viruses,
[00:27:53.350]bacteria, and a whole different environment.
[00:27:55.695]So think about that,
[00:27:57.270]as you're working with your veterinarian,
[00:27:58.610]you're designing your vaccination programs.
[00:28:01.260]Think about how that all puts together.
[00:28:03.490]Because unfortunately Scott and I,
[00:28:06.828]we haven't got it figured out.
[00:28:08.650]There's going to be a lot of new veterinarians.
[00:28:10.300]I'm hoping that I live long enough,
[00:28:11.810]so all this young crowd, you know, maybe in 20 years,
[00:28:15.580]they'll have it figured out.
[00:28:16.470]Scott, and we're like, man, why did I miss that?
[00:28:19.670]So thank you.

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Calf vaccination before weaning

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