Sick dairy animals are costly, and not just because of the expense of antibiotics necessary to treat them. They’re costly because they require additional employee time for sorting, monitoring, and treating in a hospital pen. Sick animals are certainly not productive, and they introduce additional risks to an operation.
While judicious use of antibiotics to treat dairy animals is an important component in maintaining a healthy herd, keeping animals healthy should start by setting them up in conditions that minimize disease pressure.
“There are many things in the dairy farm environment that can be monitored and addressed to keep the herd healthy,” says Matthew Boyle, senior veterinarian, dairy technical services with Zoetis. “When we work with a dairy, we first look at the day-to-day operations so we can get better at creating conditions that minimize disease pressure in the first place.”
The primary partner should be your veterinarian. “Producers should have active, ongoing dialogue with their veterinarian,” Boyle says. “He or she has an intimate working knowledge of the current conditions on your farm. The vet is the one who works with the management team to write protocols and prescriptions and takes responsibility for antibiotic use on the farm.”
Issues like proper ventilation, overcrowding, feed delivery, and manure removal can have a direct impact on an animal’s health and well-being. So can employee interaction with the herd.
Nipping problems in the bud before disease occurs and ensuring sick animals are treated properly are two main components that can reduce overall antibiotic use.
“Some animals will get sick. We need to ensure prompt discovery and institute the appropriate treatment protocol early in the course of disease,” Boyle says.
Read the Label
No matter how careful you might be, cows can and will get sick. Antibiotics are powerful tools in helping ensure cows can get back to health, yet they also need to be used carefully. That means paying close attention to all label instructions.
“The label must be read and understood,” Boyle says. “That is where working with your veterinarian is critical to ensure you are using the right product, at the right dose, on the right animal, through the correct route of administration, and for the proper duration. It is imperative that we use antibiotics in this responsible manner so we can meet our charge of producing wholesome food while, at the same time, creating situations that provide for the best possible outcome for a sick animal.”
What is the dose? What’s the route of administration? Does it go in the muscle? Does it go under the skin? How many days is it administered? What is the withdrawal period? These are all questions that need to be answered before the first dose is given. “Once we’ve chosen the antibiotic we want to use, we need to ask if we are dosing the animal correctly. A first-lactation dairy cow might only weigh 1,200 pounds, but her herd mate might be a third-lactation cow that weighs 1,600 pounds. The dose for those two animals is very different,” Boyle says. Underdosing and overdosing both introduce risk.
Producers should also work closely with their vet to ensure they are selecting animals that are good candidates for treatment.
“You need to ask if the animal is likely to respond to the antibiotic treatment and return to good levels of production before you ever start a treatment regimen,” he says.
Predict an Animal’s Predisposition for Wellness
It stands to reason that fewer sick animals will ultimately lead to reduced antibiotic use. Producers have a new tool that can help predict animal wellness for genetic resistance to mastitis, lameness, metritis, retained placenta, displaced abomasum, respiratory disease, ketosis, and calf-wellness traits for calf livability, respiratory disease, and scours. That tool is genomic testing.
“Using our genomic test, we are able to make predictions about a particular animal’s relative risk to experience one of the six major disease conditions, so the producer will know something about that animal’s biological risks relative to her herd mates,” Boyle says.
“The new frontier is selecting for animals less likely to get sick and less likely to need an antibiotic therapy,” he adds. “At Zoetis, our genomic test for wellness is Clarifide Plus. The reliability of these traits in the Holstein and Jersey breeds, while already good, continues to improve as more genomic data is collected and analyzed.”
Testing Increases Herd’s Genetic Value, Profitability
Brad Nosbush, who operates Nosbush Dairy in Fairfax, Minnesota, with brothers David and Leroy, started using genomic testing in 2010. Every animal in their 900-head milking herd is genomic-tested. For Nosbush, genomic testing is a no-brainer.
“Testing increases genetic value for our herd and increases the likelihood of profitability,” he says. “We also cull low-ranking females as calves so animals with poor traits never enter the herd.”
Analyzing the genomic data allows Nosbush to select animals with the best profile. “We look at genomic data when making breeding decisions. The best animals will receive sexed semen and the rest will be inseminated with beef semen,” he says.
This strategy allows Nosbush to build a future herd of cows less likely to get sick while at the same time walks less favorable genetics off the farm.
Semen allocation is one of many ways dairy farmers use genomic data.
The cost of a genomic test varies depending on the genomic panel the producer chooses to run. However, the payoff is huge, not only in strengthening a herd’s genetic makeup, but also in circumventing potential health issues before they occur.
“A good way to think about the cost of a Clarifide Plus test is that our premium panel will be cheaper than a single straw of sexed semen from a premium bull,” Boyle says.
“With the data we are collecting, we are able to use genomics to find animals with the traits we want,” Boyle says. “We can select animals and create future herds that have it all: top milk production and superior health traits.”
Additional data collected as more producers make use of genomic testing can help further refine trait selection and make it more reliable. “If we select animals that are less likely to get sick, we can improve the herd and reduce the use of, and need for, antibiotics.”
Producers have been quick to adopt the program. “Adoption of genomic testing has been growing steadily since it became commercially available,” Boyle says. “Our premium panel that incorporates the wellness traits now represents more than 70% of all the tests we run in our lab.”
