Alpharma

ISSUE #3

News from the Field

DATELINE : BEEF

Stress Relief

FAST FACTS

Weather, transportation and over-crowding can stress beef cattle and make them more susceptible to respiratory and enteric disease
It’s usually easier and more cost-effective to prevent disease than to treat it
In-feed medications help reduce or eliminate the need for needles and labor-intensive injectable antibiotics

Stress. It’s just a part of life. But too much of it can make you sick.

No one knows that better than Brad Etheridge, president of Thomas Cattle Buying Services, Inc., one of the premier preconditioning cattle operations in the South.

In fact, reducing stress - among his cattle, that is - is his passion. "I think the majority of the sickness and mortality in preconditioning operations - 90% of it - is due to stress," he says. "And the more that we can reduce that in our operation, the better off we’ll be."

Efforts to reduce stress in cattle start the moment they come off the truck at the sprawling 750-acre ranch complex, located in the north central Florida town of Williston. Whether purchased directly from ranchers (as is the case about 60% of the time) or from one of many sales barns in the region, all incoming cattle get the same treatment.

‘Straightening out’

"We take them off the truck and put them in pens - not too small - and let them rest for the night," says Etheridge. Early the next morning the "straightening out" process begins in earnest.

Cattle are separated according to size and gender, then quickly run through a rapid induction process that includes branding, de-horning and castration. They also inject new arrivals with an antibiotic to protect them from stress-related disease.

"We think it’s important to get all that over with as quickly and as humanely as we can, and then give them time to settle down," says Etheridge. "The quicker we can get them settled down, the quicker we can get them eating."

Once cattle are processed, they’re placed in groups and put into pens. Again, Thomas Cattle aims to keep stress to a minimum.

"You can’t take calves that have been on pasture with their mamas and jam 75 of them in a pen that’s 150 by 300 feet and expect them to start right up eating," says Etheridge.

‘We’d much rather stay away from problems in the first place than have to treat sick cattle’

Avoiding the crowd

Thomas Cattle keeps its stocking density to about 200 per 20-acre pen. "That gives them some room, as well as some time to adjust to being around new cattle and a new environment," he reasons.

Keeping the density down is an important part of Thomas Cattle’s strategy for preventing sickness and maximizing profits for its customers. That’s underscored by Burton Bellamy, who co-owns the company with Etheridge.

"We don’t want to crowd them too much because that can lead to big problems," Bellamy says. "We’d much rather stay away from problems in the first place than have to treat sick cattle."

Another vitally important part of that preventive strategy is administering the right medications and feed additives at the right time.

"We initially put an antibiotic in the water for the first 5 days they’re here," Etheridge explains. "That’s strictly a prevention treatment - something to help clean the intestinal tract."

Etheridge also adds the anticoccidial Deccox® (decoquinate) to the feed, to head off any potential problems with coccidiosis. He uses 90 grams per ton in the starter feed. Once the cattle are acclimated to their new environment and eating better, usually in about a week, they are switched to a 30-gram per ton mix of Deccox. They stay on that ration until they’re shipped out - either to feed yards, grow yards or to in-between stops on the grass pastures of northern Texas or Oklahoma.

Collision course

But regardless of the preventive care, problems can still crop up. Bo Hobby, who’s been a nutritional consultant with Thomas Cattle since 1979, says most problems tend to show up in the fall, when two prominent risk factors more or less collide head-on: weather and cattle density.

"During the spring we might have only 1,500 head of cattle in here at a time," he says. "But in the fall, the pens are bursting; we may have 6,500 head here."

That leads to more co-mingling, more nose-to-nose contact, and more chances for respiratory disease to gain a foothold in the herds, especially if coccidiosis or other health problems have already sapped their immunity.

Adding to the challenges of increased density is weather: Fall temperatures in north central Florida can climb into the 90s during the day, but dip into the 60s at night, with frequent rain further complicating the situation.

Looking for trouble

When problems do occur, says Bellamy, Thomas Cattle’s pen riders are the best there are at spotting them early. "They’re riding these pens several times a day and they’re checking feed intake, making sure it’s up to par. They’re also looking for cattle that aren’t coming to the feed truck as fast as the others; they’re looking for the ones that are staying off to themselves - ones that maybe have a runny nose or maybe look a little gaunt."

Bellamy and Hobby: ‘We don’t want to crowd them’

Bellamy and Hobby: ‘We don’t want to crowd them’

Once pen riders spot a calf that may be having a problem, the medical and nutritional approach shifts from a preventive to a treatment mode.

"When we have to treat a calf, we try to do it, again, with as little stress as possible," says Hobby. "So instead of pulling the calves out of the pen, we’ll try a day or two to treat them right there in the pen."

Again, getting the job done with as little stress as possible is a priority. Etheridge says his operation has had good success using air guns to deliver antibiotic pellets from a distance. "It’s the quickest and the least upsetting way to get them the medicine they need."

SMALL CALVES POSE A BIG CHALLENGE

One sort of "sub-specialty" of preconditioning where Thomas Cattle has developed an especially strong reputation is in handling so-called "peewee" calves - the ones that have been weaned, in some cases as early as 3 months rather than the standard 8 - and sent to Thomas Cattle to be straightened out before being shipped for grow-out elsewhere.

"That provides a unique opportunity - and a unique challenge - in preconditioning," Hobby says, because these very young calves don’t yet have fully functioning immune response and, in many cases, don’t have fully functioning rumens.

"It’s a difficult job and requires a whole different mentality and approach to feeding and nutrition." adds Hobby. "We use Aureomycin and Deccox, in combination, on pee-wee cattle to make sure they’re well protected (from bovine respiratory disease and coccidiosis)."

He explains that the oral route of administration allows him to get the drugs on board in the most economical way, without the labor costs and worry associated with needle injection.

"In a dairy operation breaking off a needle might not be that big a deal. But in a beef operation, having a needle roaming around is a big deal."

After sick calves are medicated, the pen riders closely check on them for the next several days. If they don’t see a definite improvement, the calves are pulled and sent to a treatment barn.

"We give them an injection of antibiotics," says Etheridge. "Then put them on what we call our ‘hospital ration’ - a mix of Aureomycin® (chlortetracycline) and Deccox. They stay on that the whole time they’re in the hospital barn, usually about 5 days."

Preferred route

Everybody, though, at Thomas Cattle agrees that prevention of coccidiosis and other problems - rather than treatment - is the preferred route.

"Even when we get those sick calves well, their rates of gain may be reduced because they’ve suffered damage to their intestinal tract. So your feed efficiency is much lower - and that costs money," says Hobby. Although Thomas Cattle specializes in preconditioning, they also handle many other types of cattle production chores for their highly varied clientele. One is grow-out services.

Says Hobby, "Maybe the customer had planned to take the cattle after they’d been here for 40 or 45 days and ship them to Texas. But then there was a drought in Texas. Or maybe there was a fire in the pasture in Oklahoma where he’d planned to send them. There are a lot of rea- sons they’ll call on us to handle the grow-out job."

Once cattle are in a grow-out phase, the focus changes a bit. Part of the shift is in rations, where they will add the ionophore Bovatec® (lasalocid) for the grow-out period. Hobby feels that additive gives maximum palatability, feed conversion and rate of gain during the crucial grow period.

"But all of this - the preconditioning and the other stuff we do - is as much an art as it is a science," Hobby says. "I’ll guarantee it is. And experience plays into this thing so much. We run into things we’ve seen before and we try to learn from our experience. Sometimes you hit the right button and sometimes you don’t."

"It’s not an easy business. If it was, there’d be a lot more people doing it."

©2006, Alpharma Inc.
One Executive Drive
Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024
1.800.834.6470
www.AlpharmaAH.com

For more information about the new Aureomycin-Bovatec combination, producers should contact their feed supplier or Alpharma representative, or call
1.800.834.6470 or go to www.AlpharmaAH.com .

Aureomycin®, Bovatec® and Deccox® are registered trademarks of Alpharma Inc.

DATELINE :BEEF - ISSUE #3 CD0555