News Update

December 05, 2017

Timing Vaccination Against Scours

While spring calving seems a long way off, proper vaccine timing could begin this year if your herd calves early in the season.

Prioritize scours prevention to protect the next calf crop. Scours is a potentially fatal infection spread through fecal matter that leaves young calves with no desire to nurse, weak, dehydrated, and with watery and discolored stools. Helping protect calves from scours is more than practicing good animal husbandry — healthy calves, early in life, have been shown to be more productive later in life.

Following best management practices and proper timing, scours vaccination can help prevent scours before calves are born. In their earliest hours of life, calves receive scour-fighting antibodies by consuming colostrum from their dams. Because of this, timing of vaccination related to colostrum production in the cow is critical.

It’s recommended that naïve heifers receive two rounds of scours vaccination. Their first dose should be given three to four weeks before the second dose. Previously vaccinated animals need a single annual booster.

Mother Nature designed cows and heifers to make colostrum between three and five weeks prior to calving.

Continue reading this Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA article online.

— Adapted from an article by Jon Seeger, Zoetis.

USCA Urges Administration Not to
Abandon 2015 Sage Grouse Management Plan

Earlier this year, the Department of Interior (DOI) announced its intent to reopen the 2015 Greater Sage Grouse Management Plan for revision. The United States Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) and a coalition of rural and agriculture groups submitted official comments urging the administration to maintain the framework of the 2015 Sage Grouse Management Plan and continue working with producers for a successful implementation.

USCA President Kenny Graner said:

“The collaborative efforts that went into drafting the framework of the 2015 Sage Grouse Management Plan reflect years of time spent working with a multitude of public lands stakeholders. That coordination ensured the non-listing of the Greater Sage-Grouse as a threatened or endangered species, a move that would have surely impacted the economic viability of ranching operations. We look forward to working with the administration to address improvements that can be made within the current management plan to continue our ability to practice good livestock grazing practices while ensuring that the bird stays off the list of threatened or endangered species.”

Read the comments online.

— Adapted from a release by the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association.

Warts Are Most Common in Young Cattle

Warts are caused by bovine papillomaviruses. Cattle have more problems with papillomaviruses than other domestic animals. J. Dustin Loy, assistant professor of veterinary diagnostic microbiology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, says, “Papillomaviruses are species-specific, except that some of the cattle viruses may induce warts or wart-like lesions or sarcoids in horses.”

“There are at least 12 types cattle can get. Some appear in different locations on the animal, and, depending on the type of virus, they may not all look the same,” he says.

They can enter the skin through any injury or scrape. These viruses can also be transmitted by fomites — objects like grooming tools, halters, an ear-tagging tool used on more than one animal, etc., he explains. If you use the tool on a calf that has a papillomavirus and then on a naïve calf, the virus can be passed to the naïve animal. If cattle rub on fences or on each other, the virus can spread readily.

Warts appear, grow larger and more numerous, and after a few months become smaller, dry up and fall off after the animal mounts an immune response.

Learn more by reading the full Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA article online.

— Adapted from an article by Heather Smith Thomas for Angus Journal.

AFBF Hails Bears Ears, Escalante Reforms

Regarding the decision to reduce the size Bears Ear and Grand Staircaise-Escalante National Monuments, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said:

“Today’s [Dec. 3] reduction in the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments marks a return of common sense to environmental stewardship.

“The 1906 Antiquities Act was clear in its purpose, even if the government has not always been. It was designed to stop theft and destruction of archaeological sites and other federal lands of historic or scientific interest. The act requires the president to reserve ‘the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.’ Unfortunately, that law has been abused to quarantine millions of acres of already-scarce grazing land, harming farmers, ranchers and struggling small towns across the West.

“Other presidents have established and reduced the size of monuments. Presidents Taft, Wilson, Coolidge, Eisenhower and Kennedy all shrank the size of established monuments. Farm Bureau is pleased to see President Trump doing likewise at Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante. This is different from the previous administration, which created and expanded more new national monuments than any other in U.S. history, locking up 5.44 million acres of land and 545 million acres of water resources in the process.”

For more information, read the AFBF news release online.

— Adapted from a release by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The 5 Ps To Chuteside Efficiency

“If you don’t know BQA, shame on you. Learn it,” Bowie, Texas, veterinarian Arn Anderson told about 250 people gathered to hear his Angus University presentation in early November. “Today we are going to focus on BQA etiquette around the chute that will make you more efficient. … You will live longer, be better at processing cattle, and be a better rancher.”

Anderson was charged with explaining effective Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) protocols chuteside during the educational breakout session Nov. 5 at the 2017 Angus Convention in Fort Worth, Texas. A veterinarian since 1991, he has been practicing at Cross Timbers Veterinary Hospital in Bowie for 15 years.

Anderson asked the audience to look at a cattle chute on display in the arena, noting: “It has a lot of steel and a lot of moving parts. A lot can go wrong.” It is important, he emphasized, to recognize five Ps to bring efficiency to processing cattle.

1. Purpose. “Determine what is your purpose when you are working cattle for the day. Then communicate and make sure everyone involved knows that purpose,” Anderson said.

Keep reading this Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA article online.

— Adapted from an article by Kindra Gordon for Angus Journal.

— Compiled by Paige Nelson, field editor, Angus Journal.