It’s been a very difficult winter for southwest Missouri cattlemen… the sort of winter that leads to disease problems.
Gary Naylor, who’s a University of Missouri Extension livestock specialist and the Dallas County Extension program director, told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, “We’re in a mess on the farms right now because we just had too much moisture and it’s really difficult to get out. Most of the time we would hope that we’d get freezing temperatures to at least get the ground hard, but this year it hasn’t been that way.” When it’s cold, wet and unpleasant, Naylor said, “it predisposes the calves for a lot of disease.”
There are ways to prevent disease outbreaks, but they’re not foolproof. Naylor noted cattlemen are aware of the economic importance of preventing pneumonia and other diseases and know that they need to vaccinate; however, even treated cattle may develop another strain of disease for which they haven’t been vaccinated.
Another way to counter the possible spread of disease is to prevent the cattle from gathering in one place, particularly if conditions such as those experienced this year leave fields a soggy, muddy mess. Naylor said, “Cows will congregate where you feed them hay, so if you change the spot where you’re feeding hay, that will help.”
But he said the most important thing, particularly for cows getting ready to calve, is to always keep them in a clean pasture. “It keeps the mud and mess off of their teats and udders,” he said, “and that’s certainly the way to spread disease from one calf to the other. So my recommendation would be that, especially those cattle that are getting ready to have baby calves, move those cows to a clean pasture or a clean area before they start calving.”
Naylor said rather than try to assess the cleanliness of fields, producers will gauge it based on the point in the herd’s calving. “A lot of producers say they get along pretty well as far as scour prevention is concerned until they get up to 20-25 baby calves,” he said. “Then, it seems cows need to be moved to prevent the spread of disease from the older calves to the new baby calves. It seems like it’s the later part of the calving season when they probably need to move and they haven’t, and all of a sudden we get younger calves that break with scours.”
Although one way to prevent disease from building is to periodically move hay rings, creep feeders and other equipment, Naylor said not all producers are able to take those actions. “Those folks that need to be able to get a calf up to treat it, or a cow in to artificially inseminate it… many times, those cattle are congregated for the convenience – getting them in for the needs of a health issue or to get the cows bred. So, I think folks are aware of it, but sometimes they sacrifice that in order to get some of the chores done that they need to do,” he said.
One other way to avoid the mud and mess of the season is to set aside pastures for winter feeding. “Many of us are aware of the fact that if we stockpile grasses in the fall of the year, we can graze cattle way up into the winter and maybe even into, sometimes, early spring,” Naylor said. “That’s one way to move cattle to a clean area, if not daily, every several days.”
