Vaccinations - Which ones do you use?

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:14 am

We only vaccinate our cattle for BVD because most of our animals come inside during the winter and our vet says that even herds who think they haven't got it often have, and it's quick and easy to do. Last year we also did BT, but stopped this year (but will probably start again). Another cattle farmer around here does BVD, Lepto and BT. He's never had Lepto in his herd, but says that he knew a farmer who caught it himself and it was so horrible he started vaccinating.

What do you routinely vaccinate for?

Saffy · Post by **Saffy** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 5:32 pm

Hello Clive,

At the moment we only do the BT but will maybe do BVD and Lepto in the future as well.

I believe you are in slightly less danger from Lepto as a beef farmer though than as a dairy farmer, as I seem to remember that the best way to catch it is from the cows urine and putting a machine on and off means puts you at the back end and in the line of fire - especially if you use a herringbone parlour, or any other type of parlour that uses a pit.

Poor old dairy farmer! :D

Stephanie

Martin · Post by **Martin** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:28 am

I am in the process of becoming BVD free. I have one cow that has been vacinated and she is for sale. I only had the cows tested as the herd that I have hired a bull from is BVD free and did not wish to import a problem. This winter I will test every animal I have to enable me to have BVD free status. Any animal then bought in will be isolated and tested before being introduced into the herd. As vacinated animals have anti bodies to BVD you cannot get BVD free status with them.

wagra dexters · Post by **wagra dexters** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 12:02 pm

Clive, you haven't mentioned an annual 5in1 booster. Don't you vaccinate against clostridials?
Margaret

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 3:47 pm

No Margaret, we just do BVD and we will probably do BT again in the future. I stopped BT because I had something very strange happen with calvings and so did my farmer friend down the road. So I will start again but will do it at a different time of the year.

The vaccine they use around by us is a 10 in 1. But my vet says that the risk on our particular farm is fairly low and most people around here don't vaccinate their cattle for clostridials unless they've had a death, usually blackleg, and that's not very common.

Saffy · Post by **Saffy** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 3:52 pm

We do our sheep for clostridials but not the cattle.

Stephanie

Edited By Saffy on 1252939981

Bridgehouse · Post by **Bridgehouse** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 4:09 pm

Interesting you said about the strange things you experienced with calving after the BT vaccine Clive. Exactly a week after the secong injection last year we had both a Dexter and a Beef Shorthorn start to calve prematurely by over a month.

We have left it this year till perhaps all calvings are clear. We had hoped we were plenty in advance of the calving last year not to effect them. Obviously it also may just have been a coincidence.

Saffy · Post by **Saffy** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 5:52 pm

We decided to do our BT yesterday as we only have one left to calve and she is due in 3 weeks, so getting close anyway - she has just calved!!!

Stephanie

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 5:58 pm

I put my bull in with 4 heifers in the same week as the BT injection. One got in calf and had twins, and I'm not suggesting that was the reason, that's just what happened, and then the other three didn't get in calf for another 2 months. When I put the bull in there was a lot of activity and he clearly had "lead in his pencil" because the produced twins, and after a couple of weeks or so the bulling stopped. The three that got pregnant 2 months late (i.e. all at the same time) are just calving now. Whether it's anything to do with the vaccine I wouldn't know but it's enough to make move my vaccination to a period when nothing is happening.

Here's a couple of photos of the calves. The ones with little blue tags are a day old. One had quite a difficult calving, head back, first I've ever had out of 150. Too much grass around.

Edited By Broomcroft on 1252947781

Duncan MacIntyre · Post by **Duncan MacIntyre** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 7:34 pm

The vaccinations used in a herd should really be discussed in detail with your vet. Every herd and every area is different. Your vet will be familiar with the incidence of diseases around you, though of course should not discuss details of individual neighbours with you unless there is mutual consent. There are so many vaccinations available that it would be economic nonsense to try to use them all. Some diseases however are so widespread that remaining free of them is very difficult unless you have perfect biosecurity. In many ways UK is behind other countries in disease eradication because we have allowed TB to make such inroads by refusing to accept that control of wildlife reserves in the limited areas where TB hung on in the 1970's. We should have been forging ahead with control of IBR and BVD but the whole nation has been paying the cost of what was a small localised problem 40 years ago. It is now doubtful if government in UK will ever give the support necessary to get national campaigns of control under way.

Most organised health schemes such as Premier Cattle Health or Hi Health recognise the top priorities as BVD, IBR, Leptospirosis and Johnes Disease.

Johnes vaccine is only used in extreme conditions and should not be necessary for most of us. Because of the long incubation period it is a long process doing enough testing to declare a herd free of Johnes. It is probably much more prevalent that is realised. It is easily spread by sharing colostrum.

Leptospirosis can easily affect fertility and performance, and is a zoonosis, so if your tests show presence in your herd then vaccination is adviseable. Eradication is difficult because the risk factors can be difficult to control - contact with neighbours, contact with sheep, use of bulls especially hired bulls, and water courses which flow through other holdings before they reach you.

BVD is present in such a high proportion of herds that it is almost safe to state that if you are free of it and are not taking precautions then you are about to get it. Costings done over 10 years ago indicate the probable cost in a 100 cow suckler herd getting BVD for the first time as £46000 over a 10 year period. So vaccination is not expensive compared to the risks. Bear in mind though that you may not want bulls positive for BVD if semen collection is on the cards, so do not vaccinate bulls in that category.

IBR is one of those viruses that lasts a lifetime in the affected animal, just like chicken pox causing shingles in humans. So if cattle become infected they are infected for life. They can then shed virus if under stress and start an outbreak among the naive members of the herd. If you have it in your herd vaccination may well be a regular task and more acceptable as eradication, as only culling infected animals will get it out of your herd, whereas most viruses eg BVD run their course and go. There may also be requirements of freedom from IBR reactions for semen collection or export so again take advice if you are in that market.

Complex multiple vaccines for calf pneumonia are available, with considerable variety of combinations of virus and bacteria covered, but for the most part our smaller dexter herds do not find calf pnuemonia a severe problem. Of course we now have quite a number of larger herds and if they are housing young stock in winter then calf pneumonia will be more of a risk.

Clostiridial vaccines have been mentioned and are probably not used as widely as they might be in UK cattle although they are widely used in sheep. Blackleg is the most likely of the group, but others such as black disease are on the increase too as we become warmer and wetter (well some of us do) Increasing liver fluke increases the chance of black disease which happens when clostridial bacteria multiply in damaged areas of liver. If you are experiencing sudden unexplaned deaths consult your vet.

Salmonella is another disease which can be to a certain extent controlled by vaccination but again probably not the sort of vaccine to rush into unless indicated by your vet.

The only parasitic disease with a vaccine is lungworm (hoose, or husk) and is mostly a problem in dairy herds rather than suckler herds where immunity is gradually acquired in the first year at grass. Over intensive worming of dairy young stock can prevent the natural immunity developing and then outbreaks occur in the milking herd, sometimes with devastating consequences, but not likely to be a Dexter problem.

The topical disease of the last two years of course is Blue tongue. Scotland has had a compulsory vaccination scheme for the last year and I hope it will continue next year. I think we should all be vaccinating against it, and of course we may need to use vaccine against types other than BTV8 in future. Trials are also under way for a combined BT and BVD vaccine but I don't know any details yet.

My own herd, to answer Clive's original question, is vaccinated against BVD, with young stock monitored after weaning in case of PI's occurring, before they are vaccinated. In large herds it is only necessary to monitor 10 weaned calves from each separate management group. And I vaccinate against Blue Tongue. Beryl's heifers which I got a fortnight ago have already had their first dose, along with my 2009 crop of calves.

Duncan

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:54 pm

That's extremely informative Duncan, many thanks indeed.

I forgot to mention I don't only vaccinate my animals. If you look at my thumb in the photograph, you can see a little mark where I vaccinated myself straight through my nail. I can't remember what I was using, but I didn't pull the trigger which is why I'm probably still here!

Duncan MacIntyre · Post by **Duncan MacIntyre** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 10:19 pm

We should take great care not to vaccinate ourselves. Some vaccines contain modified live organisms, so you do not want to get any of them. Most contain an adjuvant, that is a substance which increases the response to the vaccine - most work by literally causing some irritation at the vaccine site which increases the animal (or in some human vaccines the human's) response. Always read the instructions carefully, those which are particularly bad usually warn you and suggest immediate medical attention if you jag yourself. Some can cause a lot of swelling, be very painful, and if you get it in a finger, it can literally swell so much that the circulation is cut of and the finger lost. So do take care.

We should probably quarantine Clive for at least a month. :D

Duncan

Saffy · Post by **Saffy** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:05 am

We had a case of blackleg about 30 years ago. Back then we used to rent additional acreage away from this holding, so it wasn't on this soil.

However sadly yesterday due to his great age I had my horse put down and he was buried here, in a small field that had until recently been orchard for it seems 100 years at least. The cattle will be grazing that field, we haven't had a case here in at least at least 50 years and have carried high levels of stock, with plenty of ploughing and renewing of pasture on most of the acreage. As this required a very deep hole in a field not cultivated for such a long period should I now vaccinate against blackleg?

Stephanie

Post by **Mark Bowles** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:32 am

Saffy, don't let DEFRA find out, you can't bury carcasses these days!

Duncan MacIntyre · Post by **Duncan MacIntyre** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:43 am

I would not think that the burial will add significantly to the risk.

Sorry to hear about the old horse, we lost the last of our 3 ponies earlier this year and it does leave a gap. We had 2 fell ponies and a rescued shetland for years. They mixed quite happily with sheep and cattle, but not fells and shetland - at least not two fells and one shetland. One of each = ok, 2 to 1 and the Christmas cracker game was apt to be played.

I did not realise Stephanie had lived on the same farm for 100yrs. Congratulations.

Duncan