A good herd vaccination program can be the difference between making and losing money. “Disease prevention is of utmost importance in a cow-calf operation, because it is a low profit margin enterprise,” said Dr. Craig Payne, University of Missouri Extension Veterinarian. But while producers can use information about vaccines to evaluate their herd health programs, Payne said there’s no substitute for the advice of your local veterinarian: “The local veterinarian understands the predominant diseases in a particular area and has the ability to design a vaccination program that is tailor-made for the needs of each operation.”
Among the questions you should ask your veterinarian, University of Arkansas Extension Veterinarian Dr. Jeremy Powell told Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, are, “What vaccines would be important to prevent reproductive issues in my herd? What vaccines would be important for me to minimize calf diseases, such as scours, respiratory disease or blackleg? Are there vaccines available to prevent or minimize cases of pinkeye, footrot or scours in a given operation?”
Powell said Extension recommends producers administer vaccines ahead of breeding season, often when calves are 60-80 days of age. That way, they can protect the cows against diseases that can cause reproductive loss. Both cows and calves typically receive a “5-way” viral vaccination, which guards against infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR), two types of bovine viral diarrhea (BVD), parainfluenza-3 virus (PI3), and bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV). These can all cause respiratory illness, to which calves are particularly susceptible, and IBR and BVD can also cause reproductive failure and abortion. In addition, an embryonic calf exposed to BVD may become persistently infected (PI) and would shed large quantities of the virus, causing infections in the rest of the herd.
Cows and replacement heifers should receive vaccinations against leptospirosis, which also causes abortion as well as stillborn or weak born calves. Powell said, “You can usually purchase that in combination with (the vaccine for) vibriosis, which is caused by a bacterium called campylobacter; you can give that to the bulls as well. It, too, can cause reproductive loss, usually in your replacement heifers and young cows.” He also recommends a shot that protects against seven or eight strains of the Clostridium bacteria, one of which causes blackleg in calves; the cows should receive that too, he said, so they can build antibodies to be transferred in their colostrum to their next calf. That would protect the calf for a few weeks, until it can receive its own inoculation.
There are other vaccines that are optional, depending on whether the producer has had trouble with those diseases. One of those would be scours. “Some folks have a lot of trouble with diarrhea in calves,” Powell noted. “If it’s not something that you deal with on a yearly basis, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal to include it in your vaccination protocol.” This vaccine would also be administered to cows, to again pass along the antibody protection via the colostrum. Another possible vaccination would be for pinkeye. “Spring calving herds seem to have more trouble with pinkeye in calves as they go through the summer months,” he said. “Flies are a good transmitter of the disease from one animal to the next.”
Pasteurella is the most common cause of bacterial pneumonia in calves; Powell said if you’re treating a lot of respiratory disease in your calves, using the Pasteurella vaccine in young animals may reduce your medical costs. And you may want to vaccinate retained heifers for brucellosis; this vaccination must be administered by a licensed veterinarian.
Vaccines used by cattle producers can be divided into two major categories, killed and modified live. Dr. Payne said modified live vaccines provide quicker, better and longer lasting protection against viral diseases; in addition, a single dose may elicit a protective immune response in an animal that has never been vaccinated before whereas a killed vaccine will require a second dose 3-4 weeks later, although a second dose of the modified live vaccine is also recommended. However, he warned, “The primary disadvantage of the modified live vaccines is the precautions they have associated with them. Some modified lives are not labeled for use in pregnant cows or calves nursing pregnant cows.” Also, if the modified live vaccine is administered closer than 30 days before the start of the breeding season, its IBR component can interfere with fertility.
