Division of Extension
Ensuring cattle health through vaccinations, disease prevention, and biosecurity measures to protect against pathogens and pests.
Bringing new calves to the feedlot is stressful for them due to transportation, adjusting to a new home, changing feed, exposure to disease, and establishing social order with new cattle. Minimizing both clinical and subclinical disease in feedlots is essential for producers to improve profitability.
Keeping your livestock safe from microbes, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi, is the biosecurity goal that all farms should have. Wearing clean, sanitized footwear helps meet this goal as foot traffic moves microbes to and around the farm.
Using the right equipment when vaccinating your cattle requires the right tools. The correct syringes and needles must be used in addition to a well-designed and functioning headgate to restrain cattle so injections may be safely administered in the neck area.
For decades, livestock producers have moved animals on and off the farm by way of sale, leasing, renting, and between other facilities or pastures owned by the farm. With these movements comes the risk of the introduction or spread of disease.
Properly cleaning, sanitizing, and storing multi-dose syringes and transfer needles will reduce contamination from many viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The steps described here use only tap and distilled or deionzed (purified) water and do not render the equipment sterile.
Since the 1950’s, the FDA has approved several steroid hormone implants for use in beef cattle. These implants are used in all production phases from nursing calves through the finishing phase and are labeled for sex, age, or stage of production.
Shopping for deals and managing inventory are two ways to lower livestock drug costs. Have you ever been confused by the different brands available? How do you know which is the better buy?
Green is my favorite color. Green tree buds, lawns, and pastures signal that winter is finally over. It’s very tempting to turn young stock out onto newly green pasture. We are tired of indoor feeding and cleaning, and we have fieldwork and other chores to attend to. However, tempting as it is to open the pasture gate, first remember these worm management steps.
The importance of colostrum is no secret to dairy and livestock producers. Unlike many other species, the placenta of cattle prevents the transfer of antibodies from the dam to the calf in the uterus. Instead, calves must rely on colostrum, the cow’s first milk, to pass antibodies from dam to calf.
Producers can take steps to minimize the risk of a disease outbreak on their livestock premises. When beef producers increase biosecurity measures to decrease the likelihood of foreign animal diseases, they are also taking steps to reduce exposure to and disease losses from more common endemic diseases such as bovine viral diarrhea, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, mycoplasma, Johne’s disease, shipping fever, trichomoniasis, warts and ringworm.
