How can understanding the nutritional quality of the forages being fed better help you serve your producers? Dr. Phillip Lancaster and Dr. Brad White answer this question, and more, on today’s episode of Diving into Diets.
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3:20 Post Calving Nutrition
9:28 Economic Questions
16:33 Hardware Disease
For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCI, Facebook, 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!
What would cause 15 head of freshly weaned calves to spontaneously die 36 hours after processing? Dr. Scott Fritz and Dr. Brad White work through this case on Tox Talk to find the answer.
Animal welfare is a hot topic and the most frequent term used when consumers are asked to define sustainable beef. In many instances animal welfare can be associated with clear controversial issues such as swine gestation crates and poultry battery cages but those are not used in the beef industry, so you might think that the beef industry does not have any animal welfare issues or room for improvement. Even though less negative publicity is attribute to beef production compared to other livestock sectors, cattle welfare is still top of mind for consumers who buy beef products. So, what are the animal welfare issues in beef production and how can we address them?
First, let’s learn how animal behavior and welfare scientists evaluate animal welfare. Many conceptual frameworks exist, but the most basic and well known involves the 5 freedoms (Figure 1) –
freedom from hunger and thirst,
freedom from discomfort,
freedom from pain, injury or disease,
freedom to express normal behavior, and
freedom from fear and distress.
These are assessed using resource-based measurements such as availability of proper nutrition, protection from the elements, and natural environment in which to live, animal-based measures such as expression of normal behavior, availability of veterinary care, and incidence of injuries and disease, and management-based measures such as proper training of personnel in animal husbandry, low-stress animal handling procedures, and characteristics of transportation.
Good animal welfare is important to sustainable beef production as it is directly associated with animal health and behavior, which can affect cattle performance and profitability. Some of the animal welfare concerns in the beef industry raised by animal welfare specialists comprehend the difficult or failure to identify and treat sick animals in large operations; procedures considered painful such as branding, castration, and dehorning; impacts of heat and cold stress on health; risk for digestive disorder in feedlot cattle; long transportation times, commingling, and feedlot overstocking.
Research indicates that cattle with poor nutrition, subclinical disease, and stress have reduced growth and reproductive performance. It has long been known that relieving environmental stressors (cold, heat, mud, long transportation times, etc.) improves growth of cattle, and more recently we have learned that lessening psychological stressors such as human handling and weaning improves cattle performance.
The U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef’s definition of animal health and well-being aligns well with the 5 freedoms and is the cumulative effects of cattle health, nutrition, care, and comfort (https://www.usrsb.org/goals). They indicate that 4 key considerations should be the focus of management decisions and ranch practices:
Provide adequate feed, water, housing, and care
Provide disease prevention protocols
Provide facilities for safe and humane movement and restraint
Provide personnel with proper training in handling and care
Applying these principles to the cow-calf sector of the industry indicates that cows should have adequate forage available to meet nutritional requirements, and when necessary, protein, energy, and mineral supplements to alleviate deficiencies. Cutting corners on nutrition obviously has negative implications on animal well-being, but also generally reduces efficiency and profitability.
Cattle housing should include open pastures, clean wintering areas, and dry places to lie down when conditions dictate. Keeping cattle comfortable improves welfare and performance. Cold, wet, muddy cattle are not comfortable, their maintenance energy requires are 50 to 100% greater, and performance (growth or lactation) is reduced.
Adequate cattle care involves regular, frequent herd checks to promptly identify diseased or injured animals for immediate treatment. Every ranch should have a veterinary client patient relationship to develop and implement effective herd health programs. Standard health programs such as vaccinating calves at branding and weaning are not always appropriate to manage the health challenges on every ranch. Ranch managers should work with their veterinarian to identify the specific animal health issues for their ranch to best protect the herd from disease.
Cattle handling facilities should be designed for easy cattle flow and safety of cattle and humans during the process. Handling facilities do not have to be expensive to meet animal welfare standards but should be designed based on normal animal behavior and allow cattle to be moved using flight zone principles rather than frequent prodding. And all personnel, even if they have previous cattle experience, should be trained, or reminded of proper cattle handling and husbandry practices on every ranch, no matter how large or small.
Training ranch personnel can be time consuming – keeping up with new developments in cattle handling and husbandry and developing training materials. The beef industry already has an effective training and education program, Beef Quality Assurance (BQA), that will cover the basics for every ranch. This program, provided by the state cooperative extension service, can help managers stay abreast of new practices and provide basic training for new employees. Ranch managers should provide additional ranch-specific training and monitor that BQA guidelines are being followed.
A focus on achieving good animal welfare will improve sustainability of beef in the eyes of the consumer, and will increase the efficiency and profitability for the rancher.
Figure 1. The basic 5 freedoms of good animal welfare.
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.
2:29 Cattle Abortions: Diagnostic Workup
11:18 Listener Question – Following Up On Data After Selling Calves
18:39 Supplement Post Calving
For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCI, Facebook, 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!
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.
2:37 Listener Question – Learning More About Antibiotics
8:11 Cattle Cycle
15:33 Research Round-Up
Guests: Maddie Mancke, BCI Graduate Student
For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCI, Facebook, 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!
Although mastitis (infection of the udder) is often considered a dairy cow problem rather than a beef cow problem, the disease does affect many beef herds. Most cases of mastitis only involve one quarter (one teat) of a cow’s udder and the other three quarters remain normal. Even though most cases of mastitis do not result in the complete loss of milk production, calves from affected cows have lighter weaning weights than if their dam had a normal udder. Occasionally, mastitis causes severe illness in the cow, but in most situations, the cow is not greatly affected other than having reduced milk production. Mastitis can occur at any stage of lactation or even when the cow is dry, but most commonly becomes a problem early in lactation shortly after a cow calves.
Most cases of mastitis are caused by germs that are very common in the environment and on a cow’s skin. Occasionally, mastitis is caused by injury to the udder. Lactating cows are by far the most commonly affected, but heifers and even bulls or steers can have infected udders. Severe cases of mastitis, when the udder becomes reddened, swollen, and hot to the touch and the cow shows signs of illness such as being off-feed and inactive, will result in severe weight loss in the calf and cow and occasionally the death of either the cow or calf. Often, a beef producer or veterinarian will not notice a cow with mastitis because beef cattle are not typically observed daily from a short distance and many cases do not result in visible swelling or other signs of udder infection. In situations when cases of mastitis are not detected, the cow is likely to remain infected throughout the lactation and possibly for the rest of her life.
If mastitis is diagnosed, cows can be treated with special formulations of antibiotics that can be infused into the udder itself through the end of the teat. The veterinarian may also choose to treat cows with mastitis with antibiotics injected under the skin of the neck that then travel through the blood stream to the udder. Many cases of mastitis respond well to treatment, but some quarters never return to full milk production. If a cow with mastitis is severely ill, the veterinarian may recommend aggressive therapy with frequent milking out of the affected quarter, the use of anti-inflammatory drugs, and antibiotic therapy.
Because beef cows are not handled frequently, the most common time to check cows for mastitis is when they are gathered for purposes of vaccination, fly control, or breeding early in lactation, or at the end of lactation when the cows are checked for pregnancy status and/or the calves are weaned. Some herds routinely check udders and treat any affected cows at the time the calves are weaned.
Although it is probably not possible to prevent all cases of mastitis, heavy fly populations, calving in a drylot, and poor teat and udder confirmation are linked with situations with multiple cows being affected in the same herd. Older cows, particularly those with larger, low-slung udders and large teats are considered to be at greater risk for mastitis. Therefore, prevention focuses on calving cows on clean pasture and avoiding calving in wet or muddy environments, culling potential replacement heifers if their dam has poor udder or teat confirmation, and controlling flies by focusing on sanitation and appropriate use of insecticides.