Low Stress Weaning, Managing Immunity, Post-weaning Weight Loss, Pain Management

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Guest: Dr. Shelby Roberts

3:23 Low stress weaning

9:00 Managing immunity prior to weaning

16:40 Minimizing post-weaning weight loss

22:58 Pain management

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Culling Cows, Biosecurity, Research Roundup, Sustainability, Over the Counter Antibiotics

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

3:54 Culling cows

7:35 Biosecurity and new additions

15:09 Research Roundup: Kristen Smith

17:52 Products to change sustainability

25:48 Over the counter antibiotics

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Fencing, Fair Season, Summer Pneumonia, Net Wrap

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2:34 Fence repairs

6:50 Fair season warts and ringworm

16:08 Summer pneumonia

23:02 Listener question: net wrap

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Impact of Local Food Purchases Depends upon the Product

Phillip Lancaster, PhD
BCI Nutritionist

Buying local is often touted as being more sustainable, but any improvement in environmental or economic sustainability is highly dependent upon the food product and where you are located. Many food products do not grow well in certain parts of the country. For example, it would be difficult to grow oranges anywhere in the U.S. except southern Florida, Texas, and California. Many of our food production systems revolve around the differences in climate across the U.S. that are optimal for efficient production. In beef industry, cow-calf operations are found in all 50 states because the predominate feed in this sector, grass, grows in all 50 states. However, the growing and finishing operations are concentrated in about 10 states in the center of the U.S., because the majority of feed in this sector, grains and byproducts, grow best in this region of the country. Additionally, the climate in the center of the country is optimal for efficient cattle growth, and efficiency is important for environmental and economic sustainability. Growing and finishing cattle in other regions of the country result in greater environmental impact.

The product being purchased impacts the transportation costs and the carbon emissions from fuel. Estimates of fuel usage and carbon emissions for buying eggs from a local farm are 50 to 60 times greater than buying from a local grocery store. The fuel usage per dozen eggs is significantly increased when the farmer brings a few dozen eggs to the local farmers market each week or each individual consumer travels to the farm each week to buy 1 dozen eggs compared to a semitruck delivery of 23,400 dozen eggs to the grocery store. Contrast that with buying beef locally where the consumer travels once per year to purchase a whole carcass for their freezer. The impact of transportation is much less in the beef scenario than in the egg scenario because the consumer is purchasing so much more food product with each trip, emphasizing the importance of efficiency as pounds of food product per gallon of fuel used.

Another touted benefit of buying local is more money goes to the farmer, but again the impact depends upon the food product being purchased (Figure 1). Purchasing locally produced bread would significantly increase the food dollar going to the farmer, where as purchasing a gallon of milk locally will have less of an impact on the farmer’s share of the food dollar. The difference between the farm share for bread versus milk has to do with the amount of further processing from the raw commodity to the final product. Wheat requires a lot of further processing to produce bread, which results in lots of additional costs that must be accounted for in the price of bread, whereas milk requires little further processing and minimal additional costs. Thus, it is the costs of further processing that really drive the farm share, and so the farmer’s share of the food dollar depends upon how much of the further processing was performed by the farmer.

Figure 1. Retail price, farm value, and farm share for various retail food products in 2019. 

Fly Control, Euthanasia, Drought Management, Supplement Stocker Cattle

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2:40 Fly control

11:25 Euthanasia techniques

18:33 Drought management strategies

24:30 Should you supplement stocker cattle?

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Health Risk when Purchasing Cattle

Bob L. Larson, DVM, PhD
Beef Cattle Institute
Kansas State University

One issue in the buying and selling of cattle that is often not considered until a problem arises is the health aspects of the transaction. While every business deal involves some risk, including health risk, the level of risk is not the same for every transaction and producers and their veterinarians have options to lessen the likelihood and/or extent of negative outcomes.

In general, the less health information that is available for a sale animal, the greater risk the purchaser is taking. In many situations, the seller does not does not possess specific information about the health of the cattle they are selling or the potential negative outcomes that may occur when the purchased cattle are introduced into the buyer’s herd. Because a number of negative health outcomes can follow the introduction of new cattle into a herd, the buyer needs to beware of taking greater risks than should be reasonably expected.

When purchasing cattle to introduce into an existing herd, some potential health risks include: injury during transport, the stress of transport and a new environment causing a purchased animal to break with disease leading to illness of the purchased animal or transfer of germs or parasites to the herd, the purchase of cattle that have not been exposed to the germs commonly found in the home herd leading to illness of the purchased animals, and purchasing an animal that is a persistent carrier for an infectious disease and exposing the home herd to an unfamiliar germ.

The risk of injury can be decreased though careful handling and good loading, unloading, and transport equipment. Good design and maintenance as well as appropriate flooring and bedding in transport trailers along with a transportation plan that includes considerations of length of travel, weather exposure during travel, and skill of the driver to avoid excessive fatigue on the part of the cattle being moved are all considerations to reduce the risk of injury of purchased cattle.

Cattle that are stressed are more likely to become ill and to shed germs and parasites that can be spread to other cattle. Even when healthy cattle are transported to a clean environment in safe transport trailers, some level of stress can be expected. This potential period of greater susceptibility to disease and greater risk of exposing other cattle to disease-causing germs is the reason that veterinarians recommend that cattle being added to a herd are separated (quarantined) from the current herd for a period of at least 30 days so that the new cattle can become completely acclimated and can have recovered from the stress of being transported to a new environment.

Even though the purchaser of new cattle are often concerned about any germs or parasites that the new cattle may be bringing into their current herd, an equally important risk is that newly purchased cattle may be exposed to unfamiliar germs present in the home herd – causing the new cattle to become sick. This risk can be addressed by using a period of time after the original 30 days of complete separation from the current herd to allow limited contact of the new additions with a few cattle from the original herd. Older cows or animals that are being culled are often used for this purpose.

And finally, the risk that many veterinarians and producers consider first when protecting a herd from the risk of introducing new cattle is purchasing an apparently healthy animal that is a persistently infected carrier of a disease that is not currently a problem in the herd. There are a number of important diseases that can enter a herd by the purchase of a carrier animal. In my opinion, the diseases that fall in this category that deserve the greatest attention in many parts of the U.S. are trichomoniasis (trich) and bovine viral diarrhea (BVD). Other diseases that have persistent carriers and that may be of particular concern for some herds include: anaplasmosis, Johne’s, and bovine leukosis virus (BLV).

Because of the amount of loss that can occur and our current disease-control abilities, no herd should tolerate the import of cattle infected with trich or BVD. However, for some of the other diseases that have persistently infected carriers, it is not always wise to insist in imports being free of the disease-causing germs. For example in some parts of the country where anaplasmosis is extremely common, it may be better to purchase cattle that have been exposed to the organism previously and are themselves carriers. In contrast, if you live in an area with very low anaplasmosis risk, you need to protect the home herd by purchasing cattle that are not carriers. For diseases such as Johne’s and BLV, many herds already have carrier animals and insisting that purchased replacements be negative won’t make much impact on the current herd’s health status.

In summary, my advice is to have plans to keep any cattle potentially infected with trich or BVD out of a breeding herd and to know the status of your herd for any other infectious agents you may want to exclude. Work closely with your veterinarian to develop the best for your specific herd to manage the risks of brining in new cattle to your herd. In many situations, it is helpful for your veterinarian to talk to the supplier’s veterinarian so that the health status of your herd and the source herd can be compared. You should have a quarantine time when you can watch herd additions closely for at least 30 days. If any of the purchased cattle show signs of illness during that 30-day period – keep them quarantined longer so that a full 30 days passes after the last episode of illness until the new cattle are allow to have contact with your herd. At the end of the quarantine period, consider exposing the herd additions to older (possibly culls) cattle so that purchased cattle are exposed to the home-herd’s germs and parasites while you can still watch them closely.

Purchasing herd additions that meet the genetic and marketing goals for your ranch is an important part of ranch management. Managing herd additions to limit the health risks involved is an often overlooked consideration in the transaction.

Cow-calf Software, Baling Hay, Research Roundup, Creep Feeding, Milk Fever

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2:18 Listener question: cow-calf software

9:45 Baling hay

15:20 Research Roundup: Hector Rojas

18:45 Creep feeding

25:20 Listener question: milk fever

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!