Taking a different look at your bovine respiratory disease protocols

Having an effective BRD prevention and treatment protocol in place for your operation can help your operation’s efficiency and ensure that animals are receiving the same treatment across the board. Quick treatment is vital when BRD is diagnosed, so knowing which medication to use and having easy access to it can reduce the time between diagnosis and treatment.

Jim Sears

When establishing a treatment protocol, there are several key questions you can ask to guide yourself:

When do I treat the calf?
- Early diagnosis and quick treatment is vital to successfully treating a calf for BRD, so monitoring at-risk animals several times per day can help detect early symptoms for the disease.
What am I treating?
- Evaluate symptoms to determine if the animal has BRD or an alternative illness. Are you treating similar illnesses the same, such as all respiratory illnesses, or will you have a different protocol for each disease?
What are my capabilities to treat?
- Do I have the capabilities to accurately diagnose and treat the conditions described by my protocol? And are my facilities designed to appropriately accomplish those treatments?
How should I treat?
- Based on your answers to the previous questions, what are your best options for treatments? What will you select for your baseline treatment, second-pull treatment or even third-pull treatment?

Additionally, you should establish a processing protocol. One way to set up your protocol for processing is to establish a classification system for cattle arriving on your operation that guides processing based on the type of cattle, risk of contracting BRD or other diseases, and other factors.

For example, a truck of high-risk cattle arriving on your operation should perhaps be processed differently than a low-risk, healthy set of animals. Setting up a protocol manual for this purpose can guide your crew on the different sets of protocols based on animal classification. Also consider the timing of processing and vaccinating, whether you process and vaccinate on arrival or if you wait a period of time to allow the animals to recover from the stressors involved in shipping.

Limiting the number of products given at the time of initial processing and delaying the administration until the initial stresses have lessened was shown in one study to be beneficial. In that study, the administration of a DNA immunostimulant, along with delaying the administration of the MLV respiratory vaccine, resulted in a significant reduction in BRD re-treatment risk and overall death loss.

Finally, evaluate the amount of products that you are giving to each animal, especially on arrival. The results of the previously mentioned study demonstrated an important principal – less may be more. As each product given adds additional stress on the animal, consider if the benefit of giving the product outweighs the stress that it causes.

If you have a protocol already set in place for your operation, evaluating the effectiveness of your protocol year-to-year can reveal ways to improve your protocol over time. While you should avoid reacting too quickly, as variations in conditions can influence protocol efficacy, you can evaluate trends that appear after establishing a baseline performance to determine when a change might need to be made.

Creating a BRD protocol for your operation can seem like a daunting task, but following a few simple tips can simplify your protocol decisions and help your operation be more efficient in treating BRD:

Make your protocols as simple as possible.
Be objective – when selecting products, evaluate why each product should be given.
Set reasonable expectations for your protocol’s effectiveness.
Don’t overreact to small changes in effectiveness, but when trends in your data show you need to change, do.
Make sure your crew understands your protocols and follows them.
Always talk to your veterinarian about what protocol options might be best for you and your operation.