Cattle health
Dr. Dan Thomson shares essential tips for injections, needle selection and syringe maintenance to ensure herd health and carcass quality.
Although mastitis, an infection of the udder, is often considered a dairy cow problem, the disease may also impact beef producers. Here’s what you need to know and look for and how to help protect your herd.
A number of causes and contributing factors can result in hair loss and itching, and last year’s drought has played a role as harvested forages may be low in vitamin A.
At cow culling time, producers often face some tough decisions. Optimum culling of the herd often seems to require a sharp crystal ball that could see into the future.
Cattle producers need to maintain tire feeders regularly to keep cattle from swallowing wire.
Comfortable cattle are profitable cattle. That’s why many feeders take steps to acclimate new arrivals.
The ability to estimate the live bodyweight of cattle can affect whether animals receive too little drug or too much,
Producers who think their heifer reproduction program is on track may want to look again.
An enzyme helps dry distillers grain and researchers find a link between three profit robbing diseases.
Weaning is the time to begin the immunization program and determine a nutritional plan.
Veterinarian Brian Heuedepohl of Williamsburg, Iowa, and feedlot owner Mike Finnegan of Parnell, Iowa, work together closely on a replacement heifer development program.
Producers facing rising production costs can hardly afford to not use legumes.
The gold standard prevention measure is to control environmental contamination.
While preventing disease in the cattle herd should always be the top priority, it is not always possible to avoid all illness.
There are more myths about distillers’ grains and gluten feed than I can list. One of the more interesting is that distillers’ grains will cause foot rot and bloat, when in fact distillers’ grains, with their dense mineral content, improve bone and hoof hardness and will reduce the chance of bloat if fed correctly.
As we get nearer to spring calving season, our clinic will begin to get calls of aborted fetuses, near-term stillbirths and lost calves. These cases can be frustrating, as often we will not get a definitive diagnosis of what caused the problem. It is important for producers to understand a couple of things when deciding if it is worth the expense and effort to run diagnostic tests on individual ill or dead animals.
As frost begins to cover fields, cattle producers should protect grazing livestock against prussic acid poisoning and bloat.
Fall means there are a lot of calves being weaned, shipped and received. By now, hopefully, you have a plan of action in place to keep the process as calm and stress-free as possible for the animals. Additional stresses at weaning and processing can inhibit immunity.
While the type of vaccine administered is a central part of herd health, the proper timing of vaccinations is also significant.
High heat and humidity in parts of Kansas has killed more than 2,000 head of cattle.
The health, management, and vaccination history for the majority of feeder calves sold at sale barns are not known to the buyer.
Spores of the bacteria Bacillus anthracis, which cause anthrax when consumed, can survive in the soil for years.
Now we have another good excuse to cull cows due to bad temperament. Producers that routinely breed cows artificially realize that cows that are unruly and nervous are less likely to conceive by AI.
After a long winter, don’t think the spring and summer will be without challenges of their own. Here’s six impact areas you need to be ready for, as they might affect your profitability this year.
Selecting cattle for mild temperament can pay off in a number of ways. In addition to handler safety, more docile cattle might provide an advantage in reproduction.
The transition to high-energy rations, particularly those with high starch levels, can involve risk of acidosis, stress and compromised immunity in feeder calves.
As snow and frigid temperatures remind us that it’s still winter, it’s a good time to remind cattle producers that calves are especially vulnerable in these conditions.
Whichever way you look at it, increasing the opportunity for profit or decreasing the risk for loss, having an advanced genetic “scouting report” on feeders has value.
For cow-calf producers planning how to manage their calves through the stressful weaning period, deciding factors include available labor, facilities, weather, marketing goals and others.
With beef liver prices depressed at around $3 at the packer level, liver condemnations due to abscesses represent a relatively minor economic problem.
Pinkeye annually affects more than 10 million calves in the United States with an estimated economic loss of more than $150 million.
Omega-3 and Omega-6 Essential Fatty Acids are a simple and effective part of management strategies aimed to improve beef herd reproductive performance
Over the decades, cattle farmers learned to work around toxins in fescue grass in their pastures. “We called it ‘managing fescue,’” says Craig Roberts, extension forage specialist. “It shou