Calf Respiratory Disease

Posted by Dr. Steve Dudley on June 16 2009 09:40

Dairy News- Calf Respiratory Disease

Dairy Newsletter

Calf respiratory disease continues to be a challenge on dairy farms. The newborn calves are often raised in the same barn as the older calves, in a continuous flow situation. This allows for transmission of bacteria and viruses from the older calves to the younger calves through the shared air space. Pneumonia can be minimized by a proper vaccination protocol as well as by maintaining adequate ventilation in those facilities.

The number one means of prevention of calf pneumonia is providing adequate ventilation in the calf barn. Humidity needs to be maintained at less than 65%. Humidity will often rise above 65% at night when fan speed decreases as the temperature falls. It is important that there is ALWAYS a minimum ventilation fan running. This minimum ventilation fan will help keep humidity down and remove the stale air. Calves can withstand cool temperatures as long as they are not receiving drafts.

There are tools available to you through Prairie Livestock Supply to help evaluate humidity. For day-to-day monitoring you could hang a humidistat in the barn. For occasional monitoring, we can place a temperature/humidity logger in the facility. It will record the temperature and humidity for seven days. At the end of the seven-day time period, you mail it back to us and we provide you with a printout of what your temperature and humidity readings have been. This will help you evaluate the environment in your barn over seven, 24-hour periods.

The second area of prevention is a solid vaccination protocol. Because these calves are exposed to the older calves, we need to aggressively vaccinate them to maximize immunity and minimize respiratory disease.

The following chart is Prairie Livestock Supply’s recommendations for a calf vaccination protocol. This may need to be adjusted for your individual operation. Please contact your Prairie Livestock Supply veterinarian to customize your protocol.

While prevention is the best medicine, there are a number of products that you should keep on hand to treat calf pneumonia. When you see a calf breathing hard and has a runny nose, the first thing you should do is take it’s temperature. A normal calf temperature is 101 – 102.5. If the temperature is elevated and the calf is breathing hard, there is a good chance that those calves have pneumonia. You’ll want to treat those calves with both an antibiotic and a fever reducer. Nuflor is an effective antibiotic at treating calf pneumonia. The dose is 3 cc per 100 pounds IM; you can repeat that treatment at 48 hours. To reduce the fever, use Banamine at 1 cc per 100 pounds SQ. You can repeat that treatment in 24 hours. Do not use Banamine more than three days in a row. Prolonged use can result in abomasal ulcers.

We often hear that producers are using Penicillin or Oxytetracycline to treat pneumonia. Penicillin by itself is not very effective against pneumonia because resistance has developed. Oxytetracycline can be effective on a mild case.

Draxxin, which is highlighted in another article in this newsletter is also very highly effective against pneumonia. It gets very high concentrations in the lung and a single dose remains effective for 10 days. The dose is 1.1 cc per 100 pounds SQ.

Micotil is also a good antibiotic to use against respiratory disease. However, there are human safety concerns with this product. You must be extremely careful when using this product not to inject yourself. The dose is 1.5 cc per 100 pounds SQ.

If you are seeing pneumonia in quite a number of calves, there are treatments that can be used in the water. SMZ Oral in the water for 3-5 days is very effective at decreasing the level of pneumonia. If you consistently see pneumonia at a certain time period, in addition to adjusting the vaccination protocol, you could run the SMZ about 5-7 days prior to when you normally see the pneumonia. If you see pneumonia when calves are moved into group pens after weaning, run the SMZ in the water when you put the calves in that group.

In summary, research shows that calves that develop pneumonia have decreased gains throughout the rest of their life. Therefore, it is very important for the future productivity and economics of the operation to reduce calf pneumonia. This article detailed how to control the environment, develop a vaccination protocol as well as treat pneumonia to minimize the effects of pneumonia. If you have any questions on this article or would like to further discuss vaccination or ventilation concerns on your operations, please contact Prairie Livestock Supply.