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Vaccine programs?

G

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 21, 2005
Messages
998
Location
Central Alberta, Canada
Getting around to spring processing time for our cattle and I thought I'd review what we use and ask what others use. We vaccinate cows annually pre breeding with an 8-way plus a 4-way modified live (BVD, IBR, BRSV and P13) cost $2.10 cow/year.
Calves have been getting 8-way, the same modified live the cows get plus a vaccine covering some respiratory diseases. We give the calves a repeat shot of all 3 just prior to weaning. Cost $10.40 calf/ year
The reason we used this system initially was our then vet advised this was the "gold standard" protocol for animal health. Now I'm more cynical and think it may be more about putting a gold standard in his pocket :x We always fence-line wean calves in a very low stress environment so I'm not too worried about getting into health problems there. In the past we sold a proportion of our calves in the late fall "preconditioned" and I always felt we got paid for at least half the drugs right there. I assumed because we never have sick calves that probably paid for the other half.
We are moving to selling all yearlings now so don't reckon on getting anything back from the market in premium for vaccinated calves. I will likely continue with the cows on the program they are on but am contemplating dropping the calves to an 8-way only program. Would save @$9 a head which adds up quickly over the herd. Seems to me that there is little point in preparing our calves so they can stand up to the high stress weaning, hauling to auction and then to feedlot regime when we aren't subjecting them to that. Any thoughts?
 
Purely cost gcreekrch, can I get by perfectly well by spending close to $10 a calf less?
I have a friend with a small herd who uses 8-way only. Does the calves with it, boosts them at weaning and again the following spring - doesn't do any adult cows beyond that age with anything. Perfectly healthy herd - is he just lucky or are the rest of us spending money unnecessarily?
 
Grassfarmer said:
Purely cost gcreekrch, can I get by perfectly well by spending close to $10 a calf less?
I have a friend with a small herd who uses 8-way only. Does the calves with it, boosts them at weaning and again the following spring - doesn't do any adult cows beyond that age with anything. Perfectly healthy herd - is he just lucky or are the rest of us spending money unnecessarily?
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I would say lucky. We have neighbors that quit vaccinating when BSE hit. Last fall they hauled several of their calves home from the sale as they were too sick to sell. The buyers do receive orders not to buy certain groups of cattle unless they are priced to offset losses that have been experienced in previous years. Most cases I say to do what works for your operation, if keeping them healthy for the next guy puts a repeat buyer in the stands isn't that part of it?
 
Grassfarmer said:
Purely cost gcreekrch, can I get by perfectly well by spending close to $10 a calf less?
I have a friend with a small herd who uses 8-way only. Does the calves with it, boosts them at weaning and again the following spring - doesn't do any adult cows beyond that age with anything. Perfectly healthy herd - is he just lucky or are the rest of us spending money unnecessarily?
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well if he's just lucky then there are two of us.
I like the saying
"good animal husbandry doesn't come in a bottle"
give 7 way at branding, that's it, no follow ups.
our cows don't go down the chute, no preg checks etc.
pour on in Feb. for lice control.
tetnus shot when we band the bulls in the fall.
75-80% calve first cycle, usually 97-98% calf crop
you don't have much control over the market, only inputs.
 
Our calves get 7 or 8-way at branding. That's it for spring. We used to give the IBR-BVD etc. stuff, but the Vigortone vet told me we are wasting
our money on the IBR, BVD, P!3 vaccination because the calves are
too young for it to work. We only give the 7 or 8-way and have
noticed no difference in the health of our calves...which is excellent.

Remember the immune system. I keep preaching that on here,
but with a good immune system, any vaccine works better.

We did give the cows Vira-Shield 5 plus VL5 in the fall, but some
sweet-taking salesman convinced him to give the cows modified
live vaccine in the spring. So he did...no difference at all...except
added work at branding time. (Which is today, BTW). :P

Hope this helps!
 
We don't give the calves anything until weaning. Our vets have told us you're wasting your time vaccinating with even 8 way at that age, and the last several years seem to have proven them right.
Like you say FH, good immune systems are of primary importance.
 
Grassfarmer said:
Purely cost gcreekrch, can I get by perfectly well by spending close to $10 a calf less?
I have a friend with a small herd who uses 8-way only. Does the calves with it, boosts them at weaning and again the following spring - doesn't do any adult cows beyond that age with anything. Perfectly healthy herd - is he just lucky or are the rest of us spending money unnecessarily?
Click to expand...
A lot depends on your fences and your neighbours. If your neighbours have problems and/or poorer fences, vaccination is cheap. If you buy cattle in, vaccination is cheap.

We use an IBR/BVD/PI3/BRSV and an 8 way with somnugen on the calves at first processing (also when we castrate and tag) and then a booster 2 weeks pre weaning. We have had no treats or pulls on our backgrounded calves using this system. We have postponed the booster until weaning before, and it is nowhere near as good.

We are putting the cows on express 5 with somnugen prebreeding this year and will booster all cows with 8 way this fall, as we are getting a bunch of lease cows back. Better safe than sorry. We will do the lease cows with a killed BVD vaccine and then they will go onto express next summer.

We use a pour on if we see problems, usually in the late fall. Seems to save quite a bit of feed.

Vaccines are a little bit like church. If you stop going, by the time you realize you should have it is too late. If you ever price out a bottle of micotil or other treatment then the vaccine looks pretty inexpensive.

We figure it is working as we typically have 4% opens, wean about 95% and are 85% done calving now with a May 1st projected start date. As I mentioned the feeder cattle had no treats and no pulls.
 
I must be lucky also.

We work all our cows every 60 to 80 days.

My breeders get a 4 way and poor on every spring. The calf's get a 4 way 7 to 14 days before we fence line wean them. I put out a mix of sea weed and DE (food grade diatomaceous earth) 3 times a year for there wormer. They do have there free choice minerals and salt year round. I feel that a mineral program is linked very closely to the immune system and is more important then shots.

I do not have cows on the other side of the fence that I have to worry about and this should be kept in consideration.


Last year we missed an outbreak of ring worm that happened right before we ship our cows to the butcher. This caused us not to be able to ship half of them and we got stuck with them.
 
This is a pet peeve of mine.

We have the good fortune to end up with a number of calves from herds that are "saving money" by not vaccinating. You can pick them out very easily. One by one, they start to get sick, and by checking invoices and eartags, we find they often come in families. It doesn't take many of these losers to put our drug costs through the roof. We don't lose many, but boy, do we pay to keep them alive. :shock: :shock: :shock:

If I could identify the sellers of these calves, I would put an instant block on our buyer to never buy them again. If there are enough from one auction mart, we will stop purchases there too. We have found that some parts of the province are a lot less into the preventative stuff than others.

Nothing makes me madder than hearing some expert brag at the auction mart about how he never vaccinates his cows for BVD because he never has a problem. :mad: Sure, because he sells the PI calves before they fall apart. They're little more than drug addicts. They'll stay alive as long as you're willing to keep pouring the drugs in, and as soon as you stop they die. It would be nice sometime to load one of these calves up and take him home so they could see for themselves just how "few" problems they have. :roll:

We vaccinate a lot. With feeders coming and going, it's necessary. The calves get the Pfizer gold stuff at pasture turnout, and then again at weaning. These calves can even share a water bowl with the above mentioned riff raff and they still don't get sick. We've seen it time and time again with many hundreds of calves.

The cows get Jencine in the winter, and in spring get the virals as well as Lepto and Vibrio. Bulls get the same, except not the scour vaccine. :wink: The bulls also get pinkeye and footrot in the spring. Now that's a lot cheaper than treating a big old bull in the pasture. :wink:
 
Interesting Kato, I guess you are in a different position to me. We don't buy or sell weaned calves - I would like to see the habit of weaning into the auctions banned as a hazard to animal welfare and health whether they are prevaccinated or not. Without the prevaccinations it surprises me that the feedlots don't get 100% pull rates although I believe they get close sometimes. Putting a fresh weaned calf through the stresses of long auction mart stands followed by co-mingling and trucking and dumping out in a feedlot with unfamiliar feeds is a recipe for trouble.
I know we can precondition calves with a full vaccine program and preweaning and have them go into the feedlots with zero % losses or pulls - our buyers have told us that has been their experience with our calves. But if we no longer sell calves, only yearlings, continue to vaccinate cows with 8 way and 4 way which covers BVD I don't think our calves will suddenly become chronics.

As Lonecowboy said we can't control our markets, only our inputs so in a low price commodity market I think we must look at all these things.
 
Grassfarmer said:
Interesting Kato, I guess you are in a different position to me. We don't buy or sell weaned calves - I would like to see the habit of weaning into the auctions banned as a hazard to animal welfare and health whether they are prevaccinated or not. Without the prevaccinations it surprises me that the feedlots don't get 100% pull rates although I believe they get close sometimes. Putting a fresh weaned calf through the stresses of long auction mart stands followed by co-mingling and trucking and dumping out in a feedlot with unfamiliar feeds is a recipe for trouble. I know we can precondition calves with a full vaccine program and preweaning and have them go into the feedlots with zero % losses or pulls - our buyers have told us that has been their experience with our calves. But if we no longer sell calves, only yearlings, continue to vaccinate cows with 8 way and 4 way which covers BVD I don't think our calves will suddenly become chronics.

As Lonecowboy said we can't control our markets, only our inputs so in a low price commodity market I think we must look at all these things.
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I think you are right on target on so many levels,
Until someone writes you a check, they are your cattle and it's your call!!
If you don't like the way the masses are handled at auctions and feedyards -- refuse to participate, keep em like you said!!
If you have a good low stress weaning program, and take care of em there is no need for all the drugs.
There is a growing market for drug free cattle. Try and tap into it.
As long as your net pays the bills, run your cattle the way you want to.
 
I don't think there is a Natural Beef Protocol anywhere that doesn't allow vaccines-in fact if more people had a sound health program overall antibiotic use industry wide would probably drop. We vaccinate everything but I don't spend very much on antibiotics $0 so far this year. It's 'Pennies Wise Pounds foolish' not to in my opinion and I sure wouldn't buy cattle from an outfit that doesn't have a health program in place. Unless you are on a desert island it's almost impossible to truly run a closed herd. As for cattle on feed we've never had an animal treated at our custom lot-touch wood.
 
mobgrazer said:
Last year we missed an outbreak of ring worm that happened right before we ship our cows to the butcher. This caused us not to be able to ship half of them and we got stuck with them.
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Huh? You couldn't ship killing cows because they had ringworm?
 
My yearlings have had three rounds of Bovishield Gold and three rounds of Pfizer 8-way before they leave here. That costs about $1.70 every trip through the chute, but it's pretty cheap insurance for cattle that will face uncertain challenges where they're going.

Sometimes I feel like it's a waste, but I sure don't want to send naive cattle with MY brand on them to somebody if they might cause a wreck in the feedlot. The best place to be SURE that they're straightened out is at home.
 
Actually Northern, if you phone the CFIA and ask about Natural Protocol, they will tell you that their illustrious definition of "Natural" means an animal that has had absolutely no vaccinations in it's lifetime - ZERO. I've looked into it for our labelling requirements on our beed. They've told me more than once that if I want to call it "Natural Beef", it has to have come from an animal that has had no vaccinations. I asked if that includes annual health programs or just as-needed meds, and they said, "ALL VACCINATIONS - ANYTHING FROM A NEEDLE."
 
PureCountry said:
Actually Northern, if you phone the CFIA and ask about Natural Protocol, they will tell you that their illustrious definition of "Natural" means an animal that has had absolutely no vaccinations in it's lifetime - ZERO. I've looked into it for our labelling requirements on our beed. They've told me more than once that if I want to call it "Natural Beef", it has to have come from an animal that has had no vaccinations. I asked if that includes annual health programs or just as-needed meds, and they said, "ALL VACCINATIONS - ANYTHING FROM A NEEDLE."
Click to expand...

That's pretty disturbing. Just the direction this industry needs to head in :roll:
 
Our calves got Bovishield gold and a 7 way at branding steers got a ralgro also.

Cows will get a pregaurd and blackleg in november poured with the cheap generic and will be back on the scour boss 9 program come january.Had another scour outbreak here this spring and it's quite discourageing.I bet it cost me $10,000.Never again will I quit the vaccianation's for scour's.Good mineral is'nt enough here.
 

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