With calves hitting the ground right and left, what about scours and other diseases? A lot of these problems can be prevented with proper vaccination of the entire cow herd. In the last 24 years of practice, I have seen highly vaccinated herds and other herds with almost no vaccines. The ones that are highly vaccinated hardly ever have problems.
About 10 years ago, I had one herd that was highly vaccinated. They decided to wait and vaccinate their calves post-weaning. In the mean time they had a bad outbreak of pneumonia and coccidiosis while weaning the calves. Since then they have never let the calves go without vaccines prior to weaning, including boosters. Granted they did not have a bad death loss, but the antibiotic treatment and time through the chute cost immensely.
With a cow herd that is highly vaccinated, the cow will pass on high quality colostrum with immunity to her calf. This will set the calf on the right start for the beginning of its life. This also means giving blackleg to your cows. About 80 percent of the calf scours I see is caused by a gut form blackleg. The actual causative agent is the last words on the blackleg bottle of vaccine, (Clostridium Perfringens Type C & D).
This agent can hit a calf and kill it within 12 hours or less. I have also seen it cause scours and slowly take a calf down with scours. At first signs of this disease the calf may have a slight belly ache or colic. Then it will get very weak and unthrifty. This is from the toxemia of the bacteria. If we do not block this toxemia the calf will die. Luckily, there is an antitoxin to this disease and with proper treatment these calves normally will pop back within one to three days and be back on the right track.
As far as the respiratory side of calf diseases we need to protect them from the viral side. This is IBR, BVD, PI3 and BRSV. Normally, if we can keep the viruses out of the calves at this young age, we keep the pneumonia out of them. The best way to do this is to vaccinate your cows. Then the immunity is passed on to the calf through the colostrum. This immunity will last anywhere from two to five months of the calf’s life.
These are the reasons I recommend vaccinating all cattle with a 7-way blackleg, IBR, BVD, PI3 and BRSV. Now, the next antigen to add in is Lepto, but that is another whole article.
Dr. Tim O’Neill owns Country Veterinary Clinic in Farmington, Ark.
