Preventative Care is the Key.

Our scale tells us how much each calf ways so we can correctly dose out the antibiotic.

Sick cattle are a very serious business. We spend thousands of dollars each year to keep the cattle from getting sick in the first place because vaccines are cheaper and easier than antibiotics. When we do have a sick calf, we quickly assess the situation and give the appropriate treatment. It's important for us to know the signs of a sick calf and have a treatment plan already in place for whatever sickness they may have.

We try and walk pens every day when we have new cattle and/or young cattle. A younger, lighter steer is more susceptible to disease than an older, heavier steer. When we walk pens we scan each calf for any sign of sickness. We are looking for each calf to have bright eyes, their head held high, ears forward, and normal range of motion. Any deviation from this can be cause for treatment.

Signs of Disease

We have to know how to give an injection correctly.

A calf that is lethargic, is generally running a fever and needs to be treated immediately. A calf with a dropped ear and/or a limp probably has Mycoplasma and needs a specific antibiotic to get better. Stumbling, stiffness, muscle weakness, and labored breathing coupled with dull eyes and a lowered head are the signs of Somnus and need to be treated as soon as we identify it. Any type of labored breathing may be Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD), which even if they recover 100% from can cause them to have reduced lung function for the rest of their life. A 1200+ pound steer with only 60% lung function is not healthy and probably won't make it to finish weight. We spend many long hours trying to prevent these diseases so we don't have to treat them but it is important for us to know the signs so we can treat each calf quickly and effectively. The faster we can get a calf to recover the better chances that calf has of recovering and rejoining his friends and their antics.

Treatment.

Our head gate is our best tool for treating cattle so they don't hurt themselves or us.

When we treat a calf we need to know the weight. Most of the time we know the average weight of the pen so we can accurately estimate the weight of the individual steer. When this method doesn't work, we can use the chute and scale. We always use the chute for beef cattle because it is the easiest and safest way to catch and treat them. Once they are secured in the headgate the scale will give us their weight which we can then use to dose out the antibiotics. Antibiotics have a dosing rate of so many milliliters per hundred pounds so, with a little basic math, it is fairly easy to figure out how much of each antibiotic a calf should get.

Rotation and Withdrawal Times

We use special paint to mark the cattle after they've been treated. Based on where the mark is at we can tell, at a glance, what antibiotics they've already had.

If we have to treat a calf more than once we make sure to rotate which antibiotic we use to treat them. This helps reduce the number of resistant diseases we see in the cattle. When we use antibiotics we have to make sure we follow the withdrawal time. A withdrawal time is how many days before the antibiotic is out of a steers system. If a steer is close to slaughter weight and needs to be treated we have to make sure to wait until the withdrawal time as passed to send him to be processed. Each carcass is tested for antibiotics at the plant so no antibiotic-tainted meat gets into our food system.

Antibiotics are important in the cattle industry. No matter how hard you try there is always one calf who gets sick and needs to be treated to live. We take this responsibility very seriously and always use antibiotics with great caution. We are in regular contact with our veterinary clinic to make sure we are correctly administrating the antibiotics and diagnosing the disease. While preventative care is the best way to prevent disease, we have to have the ability and knowhow to treat sickness when it appears in our herd.

Edwina: our cattle sorting and treating chicken!