How Much is BRD Costing Your Dairy?

Its long-term effects are costly, but you can reduce the incidence of this insidious disease.

Everyone knows that bovine respiratory disease (BRD) continues to be a costly problem for Dairy producers. But do you really know how much BRD is costing your dairy enterprise?

The National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) 2007 Dairy study estimated dairy heifer
mortality in the United States to be 7.8 percent for unweaned heifers and 1.8 percent for weaned heifers. The NAHMS study revealed that respiratory disease accounted for 22.5 percent of unweaned heifer mortality and 46.5 percent of weaned heifer mortality.

Amy Stanton, Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, has studied BRD and dairy animal behavior for several years. Stanton was a presenter at last summer’s BRD Symposium, held in conjunction with the Academy of Veterinary Consultants meeting in Colorado Springs. She offered Bovine Health Watch her insights about this serious disease.

BRD has a significant long-term impact

A PhD candidate whose specialty is epidemiology – the study of disease in a population – Stanton believes BRD has a huge economic impact on dairies. But she notes that while the direct costs of treating the animals are easy to measure, the long-term consequences of the disease make it difficult to estimate the total economic and welfare costs.

“What is under-recognized and really hard to get a handle on are the indirect costs of BRD,” says
Stanton. She points out that research has shown calves who contract respiratory disease early in their first three months experience a delayed first calving, increased risk of dystocia and a heightened risk
of dying prior to calving or being culled.

She also told Bovine Health Watch, “BRD is a problem that is not going to go away soon.” At the same time, she says, “there’s a lot of potential to reduce or eliminate BRD for long periods of time at the farm level.”

Reducing the incidence of BRD

Stanton says treatment decisions for respiratory disease should focus on the full course of the disease. First and foremost, you should work with your herd veterinarian to prevent respiratory disease. “Ideally, we don’t want calves to ever get this disease,” she emphasizes.

Effective BRD prevention strategies include good colostrum management to assure passive transfer of colostral immunity, balanced nutrition, proper housing, vaccination and isolating young stock from mature animals, says Stanton. Monitoring and improving air quality in your barns is also important for increasing the odds of avoiding respiratory disease, she says.

Another important tactic is to minimize and spread out the situations that might stress your calves. Stanton says weaned calves are easily stressed when they are moved from a nursery or calf hutch into group housing. The change in environment, feeding location and social interaction in the herd are all potential stressors.

“Identify stressors that are affecting your calves and start eliminating or minimizing unnecessary ones,” Stanton recommends. She suggests paying particular attention to these tactics:

• Move the calf from the dam into a separate barn, preferably within 12 hours but not longer than 24 hours, to prevent spread of pathogens from the cow to the calf.
• Use a local anesthetic with some analgesics to help reduce the stress of dehorning.
• Make sure the calves are ready to make that transition from milk to calf starter. A good guideline is to ensure they are consuming one to two pounds of calf starter for several days before you remove the milk.
• Ensure ample fresh, clean drinking water to help stimulate the calf starter intake and rumen
  development.

Unfortunately, even the best prevention and treatment efforts won’t be able to eradicate BRD. That’s why
it is important to work with your veterinarian to develop protocols to deal with sick animals, says Stanton.
These protocols should focus on early detection and treatment for BRD and would entail decisions that maximize the welfare of calves while maintaining the productivity of your dairy.

Focus on early detection

Producers and veterinarians need to focus on early detection and treatment of BRD, says Stanton.
The benefits include reducing the potential for lung damage in individual calves, increasing the
likelihood of treatment success and decreasing the length of time a calf sheds bacteria and/or viruses.

She says you also need procedures to help you determine when various treatments would be beneficial, and when euthanasia would be the best alternative because an animal is not responding
to treatment or is suffering.

Further, BRDtreated cattle need different management approaches to help keep them productive, she says. These approaches might include grouping them by health status, moving them to a less competitive environment and delayed breeding.

Stanton says one of the best ways to fight BRD is to take a proactive approach. “You really want to work with your veterinarian before an outbreak occurs; don’t wait until all the calves are down with respiratory disease.”

Even though BRD remains a challenging and costly problem, much progress has been made in the fight against it. Stanton says, “More research is needed to support producers and veterinarians in their efforts to control the disease. We want to keep going forward and make sure we are doing everything we can for BRD control, but we also want to make sure we are doing everything we can for the calves that are currently out there.”