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Lynsey McAnally:
Angus at Work, a podcast for the profit minded cattleman. Brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin. We have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics, and management. Let's get to work, shall we?
Hello and welcome back to Angus at work. With calf prices still high, producers and cattle feeders are looking for ways to further protect their investment in their livestock. Today's host, Shauna Hermel, had the chance to visit with Dr. Shawn Blood, Managing Veterinarian on the Beef Strategic Technical Services team at Zoetis, to discuss bovine respiratory disease, what producers should be looking for when identifying BRD in their own cattle, and a new product available through Zoetis that is showing promise in treating this disease. Let's dive in.
Shauna Hermel:
Hello, my name is Shauna Hermel, editor with the Angus Beef Bulletin, and we welcome you to the Angus at Work podcast. We're talking today with Shawn Blood, a technical veterinarian with Zoetis Animal Health. You have a big long title with that. Could you go ahead and repeat that for me?
Shawn Blood:
I sure can, Shauna. I am a technical service veterinarian in our Beef Strategic Technical Service group. It's a group that has our veterinarians in our nutritionists in it. It's a group of about eight or 10 people, and I'm one of the members of that group on our team.
Shauna Hermel:
What's your role in that position? What do you do on a day-to-day basis?
Shawn Blood:
My kids ask me that all the time, and they still don't understand it. Sometimes I don't understand it. Our primary goal is to provide technical support to our field force sales team, technical liaisons to our marketing team. Then we also participate in research studies for our products as a monitor of those studies and help design and initiate and execute those studies.
Shauna Hermel:
If there is a disease complex that's causing a problem out there, would you get in on the initial?
Shawn Blood:
We would do some of that. If one of our products is involved, one of the things we do is help our field force as well as our clients and customers troubleshoot that problem as well. That would be another part of our direct support of our products in the field.
Shauna Hermel:
One of the things that we were going to talk about today was bovine respiratory disease or BRD. Can you give us a little bit of background on how big a problem that is for the feedlot industry and maybe cow and calf too?
Shawn Blood:
It's still the biggest infectious disease problem that the beef industry in general has, it would be the biggest problem in the feed yards, specifically. We've got several viruses that are involved in that complex. We have several different bacteria that are involved in that complex. We call it a complex because there's so many things involved with it that you just can't take care of one thing and expect to have a long-term positive effect. We have to look at it from several different areas because it is like the definition, it is a complex.
Shauna Hermel:
You bet. Some of the diseases that would be involved would be what?
Shawn Blood:
Some of the what?
Shauna Hermel:
Some of the diseases that would be involved in that complex.
Shawn Blood:
We have several, what we call respiratory viruses, IBR, PI3, BRSV and BVD. Those are the main ones that we worry about, can vaccinate for. Then from the bacteria standpoint, we worry about mannheimia, hemolytic, pasteurella multocida, histophilus somni, and then mycoplasma bovis. Those are the four bacteria that most of our anti-infectives try to target when we're trying to control or treat that disease.
Shauna Hermel:
Do you have off the top of your head how much money it costs feed lots on an annual basis to losses and performance losses?
Shawn Blood:
That's a moving target just because the value of cattle changes. If you look at the cost of cattle today and the value of cattle today is extremely high, record highs. The number that is often thrown around is a billion dollars a year to the cattle industry with BRD.
Shauna Hermel:
That would be before this past year with $3 calves?
Shawn Blood:
Exactly. It's a big pile of money. That's the bottom line. It's a lot of money.
Shauna Hermel:
What kind of precipitates a problem with BRD? Are we finding that when the cattle first arrive, is it more in that early stages or late stages?
Shawn Blood:
It's usually early. One of the more common names for BRD is shipping fever. We're shipping those cattle into a feed yard. We're commingling them. Sometimes there's several days between that transit, other environmental stresses, and we bring them into a feed yard and commingle them. That's often when we start seeing. That is the most common time that we see BRD or shipping fever type problems in a feed yard.
Shauna Hermel:
Ways that we can prevent that?
Shawn Blood:
Well, we have the several vaccines that are labeled to help prevent some of those specific infectious parts of it. The most effective thing over the years for higher risk animals that we are expecting a higher morbidity and mortality in, we have metaphylaxis, which is the use of an antibiotic. They're actually labeled for control, which would be synonymous with metaphylaxis. We give those at the time of processing to help control that disease, those bacterial diseases in that part of the BRD complex.
Shauna Hermel:
Most of the prevention strategies would actually have to start at the cow calf level rather than at the feeder level.
Shawn Blood:
We sometimes forget that, that animal wasn't born when he comes off that truck, backs up to the chute at the feed yard. There's so many things that can happen in that animal's life that could help prevent or set him up for disease or non-disease situations. We have to keep that in mind. That animal has had a lot of management things done to him that could help prevent, or actually could help cause those different diseases by the time they get to us at the feed yard. We talk about managing those diseases at the cow herd, and that starts with vaccinating the cows as well. That management of that calf at the cow level is a very important part of his lifelong opportunity to be healthy his whole life.
Shauna Hermel:
What disease complexes would you say the cow herd ought to be vaccinating for in order to prevent BRD in the feed yard?
Shawn Blood:
Those exact same pathogens for us, I mean when they come to the feed yard. It's those vaccines. The common confusion with vaccines is, I gave the vaccine today, that calf is immune. Where actually, it takes several days, in fact weeks to get that perfect immune response. If we could get all of that done before they get to the feed yard, that's better serving that animal. Our expectations should be higher for any of those disease prevention programs.
Shauna Hermel:
Angus Media have conducted an industry insights survey of the industry with feed yards and cow calf operations, and of course, the number one wishlist for feedlots in that survey was a better vaccine protocol and the translation of that to the feed yard. With the premiums in the marketplace now that are available for vaccine protocol, how would you suggest to commercial cow calf producers to communicate that to where people know what they're bidding on when they get their calves or when they buy calves?
Shawn Blood:
There would be some different programs that are available out there to be enrolled. In. Ours at Zoetis is SelectVAC. There's some other ones out there. Some of the video auctions have specific programs that try to validate those different vaccination protocols. Those are a very important part of it. Some of those databases looking at what cattle are bringing in those programs, they show that there is definitely a cost-effective way to spend the money on those vaccines.
Shauna Hermel:
You bet. They're getting a payback on those calves doing that vaccination. Now, is it important for those calves to have two vaccinations before they leave the cow herd, or is that something that's a communication?
Shawn Blood:
That would be the most common. One that's very common is, and every herd needs to have that conversation with their veterinarian because every herd has some different management things that have to be addressed. We would tell them to work through their veterinarian with that. A very common recommendation would be given the first round of those viral vaccines, branding or turnout on grass, and then somewhere around the weaning time, whether you try to do it before weaning a week or so, or at weaning. Those are common protocols and a lot of those programs that have an assigned protocol to them.
Shauna Hermel:
Now you work mostly with feed yards, I take it, and dealing with the problem once you get those calves in-house and not knowing necessarily whether they've had a vaccine protocol or not. Tell me a little bit about how you would advise feed yard owners to go through and provide the preventative management for BRD, try and prevent it?
Shawn Blood:
We would have what we would call a core vaccination program. If we don't know anything about the previous history of those animals, we would evaluate risk factors that we think could help prevent the disease. We'd talk about how far were those animals trucked, what was the weather like when they got to the feed yard, the environmental conditions, how big are they? Usually, a lighter animal is going to be a younger animal, so that could be a risk factor as well. Another big one is co-mingling. We've seen where we do everything right with a small group of calves, but we have to add them to another group that maybe wasn't handled ideally. That co-mingling can be a big problem with in those situations we worry about BRD as well.
Shauna Hermel:
Most often, is it one or two calves that get sick or are we looking at an outbreak?
Shawn Blood:
It is most often, and there's extremes. It can be anywhere to a few to, in some cases, the entire pen we've seen may have to be pulled and treated, but those would be the extremes. We talk about different classifications of risk. We might use a 15 to 20% pull rate. Sick pull rate is what we might call a moderate risk animal. When we get over that and up into that 30 range, we might call those guys high risk. These are just ballpark thumb rules. Then when you get higher than that, they may call them even ultra-high risk. We try to put those in those boxes, those risk categories, and modify our receiving programs to fit those better. The problem is we're wrong a lot on those, but that's what we try to do.
Shauna Hermel:
Now with so many diseases being part of the complex, the symptoms have to be very broad too.
Shawn Blood:
The problem with it is, in a pen or a population of animals, we call it polymicrobial. Poly, meaning many. There's many of those pathogens that could be involved in an outbreak. Because there's so many of those viruses and bacteria that can be in a population at the same time we treat them, we look at that as a complex and treat it as a single complex and not try to pick the individual bacteria or viruses to target on a real time basis anyway.
Shauna Hermel:
What are some of the symptoms that feed yard managers would look for to indicate a BRD problem?
Shawn Blood:
Well, I mean the classic thing we tell pen riders and cattle handlers or feed yard is an acronym, DART, D-A-R-T. They're depressed. What's their appetite? Are they eating? We evaluate that in a live animal by how full does he look in his rumen. R is for respiratory rate. Is he breathing hard? Abnormal respiratory rate. Then the T is temperature. We're going to pull that animal, take his temp, see if he's running a fever, and that'd be the T in that DART.
Shauna Hermel:
A fever that would indicate a need to treat would be what?
Shawn Blood:
One that's commonly used in the feed yards is 104 Fahrenheit. Some people use half a degree lower, some might use up to 105. A pretty good average would be 1 0 4.
Shauna Hermel:
Recommendation as far as after you realize you have a problem, you pull that animal and keep it away from the rest of the pen for a while, or can you pull and treat an animal and put him back in the pen?
Shawn Blood:
Some feed yards will use a hospital type system and some feed yards will use what they call a home pen recovery. Those animals, the cowboys pulled them, our treatment technicians have evaluated them and treated them. They may go into a hospital pen system and stay there for maybe three days until they're appear clinically better. Then they'll take them back to the home pen. A lot of feed yards, since we started using long-acting antibiotics, long duration of activity antibiotics, they've started using a home pen recovery system where they'll pull that animal, treat him, and then send him back the same day or the following morning and don't keep him in the hospitals for several days.
Shauna Hermel:
Which probably helps prevent some mixing of animals when combining them to go back.
Shawn Blood:
That's the philosophy. I would be the same way If I'm sick and somebody has done a lot of stuff to me, I'd rather be at home in my own bed trying to get better than sitting in a hospital with a bunch of other sick people.
Shauna Hermel:
You bet. Wondering who's going to come in next to poke you.
Shawn Blood:
Exactly.
Shauna Hermel:
What are the options as far as treatment?
Shawn Blood:
We have several different antibiotics available for treatment and really good antibiotics, in general. The ones that Zoetis has would be our Draxxin. We have Excede, a product called Excede. We have another product, a different class of antibiotic called Advocin. And then our most recent addition to our product line is a product called Draxxin KP. It's a premium Draxxin product that we added an NSAID. The NSAID is a Ketoprofen. NSAID is nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug.
Shauna Hermel:
Like Advil.
Shawn Blood:
What's that?
Shauna Hermel:
Like Advil.
Shawn Blood:
Exactly. In fact, ketoprofen is in the same class of drug as ibuprofen, which would be Advil. That's our newest product in our anti-infected portfolio.
Shauna Hermel:
That addition, obviously, for a person if they're on ibuprofen, usually that makes you feel a little bit better. Does that help with the cattle coming back?
Shawn Blood:
That is the objective of that. Ketoprofen is labeled for control of fever. To get that label on there, one of the things we had to do was give an artificial fever to animals by injecting them with a product that causes an artificial fever and then give them the ketoprofen and then monitor how long that, that fever is kept below normal versus just giving them a saline product. We found when we did that with Ketoprofen by itself, we got about eight hours of fever reduction. One of the really nice things we found out when we put those into combination, it extended the half-life for the duration of that fever reduction capacity all the way out to about 24 hours. It was a really nice serendipitous thing that we found when we've combined those two products together.
Shauna Hermel:
Now, Draxxin is a long-acting drug?
Shawn Blood:
Yes. If we look at what we call the pharmacokinetics, which is what the drug does in an animal's body, we keep the blood levels high enough in the lungs that it last out to about 14 days in efficacy against the primary pathogens that we have on the label.
Shauna Hermel:
You wouldn't re-treat an animal for 14 days then if they were still showing symptoms?
Shawn Blood:
We use what we call A PTI, a post-treatment interval. We have some data looking at it all the way out to 14 days. I think the industry in general has settled into a seven to 10-day PTI with Draxxin and feel very comfortable with that.
Shauna Hermel:
What's a normal recovery rate for, I mean, if you have 100 calves that are sick and need treatment, how many of those can you expect to recover to a full-term capacity?
Shawn Blood:
A lot of variation there. We've done a lot of studies with Draxxin. We've done more studies, published studies with Draxxin than any other drug molecule that's out there from the BRD standpoint. If we look at all of those studies, and if you look at other published studies, 70 to 80% first-treatment success would be pretty common. Some of those will be higher. If we're looking at some bad weather conditions and some other high-risk causing problems, it could be less than that. If we're looking at 70 to 80%, we would feel like that's pretty common.
Shauna Hermel:
Of course, there'd be a withdrawal time with Draxxin. How long is that?
Shawn Blood:
It's 18 days.
Shauna Hermel:
18 days.
Shawn Blood:
Same with the Draxxin KP. It would also be 18 days withdrawal time.
Shawn Blood:
When we launched Draxxin KP, we felt like that we needed to go. One of the studies we needed to do would be compare it to the other main product that's on the market that has an antibiotic and an NSAID. That product is called Resflor. It has flunixin in it. It's florfenicol and flunixin. Those are the two products. Their flunixin is the NSAID. That's the most common anti-infective NSAID product that was on the market when we launched Draxxin KP. We felt like we needed to go head-to-head to compare Draxxin KP to the Resflor product. That's what this study that we have here did.
Shauna Hermel:
Where was the study done?
Shawn Blood:
It was actually done in Idaho at a commercial feed yard.
Shauna Hermel:
Was there a university involved or is this a private study?
Shawn Blood:
Nope. It was an independent consulting group that does these type of studies on contract.
Shauna Hermel:
What kind of cattle did you use for the study?
Shawn Blood:
These would've been some moderate-risk animals. They came in averaging at about 570 pounds. Our target was to enroll 500 animals that got pulled and treated with Draxxin KP and another 500 that got treated with Resflor. We ended up enrolling about somewhere between 480 and 490 in each group. That's the number we ended up enrolling in the study.
Shauna Hermel:
There would've been a larger set of calves that were brought in and then these would've been totally a natural feed yard setting where they were?
Shawn Blood:
Exactly. It'd be just a typical receiving program, a population of animals that we were expecting some of them to get sick. As the pen riders pulled those animals, they were randomly assigned to getting either Draxxin KP or Resflor. Then that's when they would've been enrolled in the program. They would've been sent back to their home pens and monitored in that capacity. They would've been pulled from a large population of animals as they got sick.
Shauna Hermel:
When you said that they would've been monitored after they got back to their home pen, just pen riders checking on them next day?
Shawn Blood:
Just routine daily observations by the commercial feed yards pen riders.
Shauna Hermel:
Not necessarily brought to do a thermometer check on them?
Shawn Blood:
Nope. They would've been the typical pen rider looking at animals and evaluating whether they needed pulled and treated again.
Shauna Hermel:
What did you find?
Shawn Blood:
We found those what we call our BRD relapses, which is those animals that ended up being re-pulled after a PMI, or PTI. We found that if they got Resflor Gold, we had about a 32% relapse rate, first pull relapse rate. Only about a 28.7% relapse rate with Draxxin KP. We saw a nice reduction in relapse rate.
Shauna Hermel:
Was that a significant difference?
Shawn Blood:
Yes, it was statistically significant. What we call statistically significant. We also showed an advantage on the second relapses, which would be about 51% with Resflor Gold and about 35% with the Draxxin KP. A reduction there as well on the second relapses. Then the other thing we saw different would've been in mortality, the dead ones. We saw about a 43% reduction in BRD percent mortality went from 5.6% to 3.2%. Then overall mortality, which is just all cause mortality, we went from 7.9% with Resflor Gold and dropped it down to 5.7% with Draxxin KP. Both of those were nice statistical advantages on the mortality standpoint. Again, with the cost of feeder cattle today and when we ran this study, those are big economic drivers of that value proposition for those antibiotics. The other thing we saw in there was a nice advantage was the average daily gain or the weight gain advantage.
Shauna Hermel:
You bet.
Shawn Blood:
During that, roughly 160 to 165 days that those animals were on test, we saw about a 17-pound advantage in total weight gain to the animals that got Draxxin KP versus the ones that got Resflor.
Shauna Hermel:
That would've only be on the treated animals. That isn't an average across the pen.
Shawn Blood:
Exactly. Those would've been only the animals that were enrolled in the program that had been pulled and treated. They would've gone in and gotten individual weights out of those animals at the end of the trial period, which was about that 165 days, and then calculated that weight gain from when they were enrolled to when they left the study ended.
Shauna Hermel:
Did you carry that through at a carcass?
Shawn Blood:
We did not follow those through to carcass. This feed yard, they did a management sort later in the feeding period so that we ended the study when that management sort happened because we couldn't follow the animals through. From the animal health standpoint, if you're looking at 165 days on feed, we feel like we're going to see most of our animal health stuff evident at that stage of the game.
Shauna Hermel:
Excellent. Did you calculate a payback for treatment?
Shawn Blood:
We did not do a financial calculation on this one specifically, at least in our technical bulletin. One of the problems with doing those calculations, we encourage people to, in our sales team, to do their own napkin math type calculations. Because if I did a calculation with these numbers five years ago on what the price of feeder cattle would've been then and what the price of some of our antibiotics were then, if we did them today with these same cattle bringing maybe twice as much. That economic calculation and that value proposition is totally different. Again, that big difference in death loss and that class and expensive animal plus that 17 pounds of weight gain, those are pretty big numbers in an economic calculation.
Shauna Hermel:
Are there any studies out there that are ongoing that producers can keep alert to the findings for that you're aware of?
Shawn Blood:
Zoetis spends several hundred thousand dollars every year on what we call post-approval studies in our beef business. That could be looking at, and this is an example here, we were looking specifically at anti-infective comparison. We've had a few different vaccine comparisons that are out there and have some of those that are in the pipeline to be published and available for use and visibility of the public. Another big one that we have is some implant studies that we have ongoing that better utilize and better find a perfect fit for the different growth promoting implants that we have.
Shauna Hermel:
When will that be published?
Shawn Blood:
The implant studies? Those will be a while.
Shauna Hermel:
I know with the difference in the guidance and regulations.
Shawn Blood:
The guidance stuff. We have some studies available right now to help with that, specifically. Specifically, looking at those approved combinations. We're always looking to add to that. Those are some studies that'll be started soon. It's hard to put a timeframe on when those will be available.
Shauna Hermel:
If a feed yard or a cow calf producer has a problem with the disease, what can they do to get help from Zoetis, what would you recommend?
Shawn Blood:
Zoetis has a very strong field support team. We have our veterinarians, our technical service veterinarians that are on the ground and in the field essentially every day. We have our strong team of nutritionists. If you've got questions on production and nutrition implants, our medicated feed additive line, those guys are available with just a phone call. Another very strong team that Zoetis has, and maybe the leaders in the industry are what we call our VMIPS team, Veterinary Medicine and Information and Product Support team.
They're the ones that if you look at on the bottle, there's a phone number on there, they're the ones answering the phone and help troubleshoot any questions you may have on that. It could be as simple as something about my bottle cap wasn't on right or something and something wrong with the packaging or something simple like that to as complex as spending some money and helping the producer with cost of diagnostics to help troubleshoot a problem that he may have. It's complex and we feel like that those are value added services that a lot of companies may not have. We have a very strong team that we feel like are industry leaders in that.
Shauna Hermel:
To access that help, look on the bottle for the phone number?
Shawn Blood:
That would be our VMIPS team. If you want to talk directly to our technical service team, call your Zoetis field rep. Most people are going to have a territory manager sales rep that can sure get you somebody lined up with somebody that can help.
Shauna Hermel:
Thank you. I appreciate you taking time to visit with us today, Dr. Blood. We will wrap this up with, usually we try to wrap up with something that's really positive going on in your life and how it doesn't have to be related to cattle, but can be. What's really positive?
Shawn Blood:
Man, I would have to say the most positive thing I've got going on is I recently moved from Guymon to Edmond, Oklahoma. It got me really close to my two grandkids. I got a three-year-old and a six-month-old.
Shauna Hermel:
Well, they'll keep you busy then.
Shawn Blood:
Oh, yeah.
Shauna Hermel:
Better solve this BRD problem quickly.
Shawn Blood:
Absolutely.
Shauna Hermel:
Well, thank you. I appreciate your time today.
Shawn Blood:
All right. Thank you, Shauna. I enjoyed it.
Lynsey McAnally:
Listeners, for more information on making Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin extra. You can subscribe to both publications in the show notes. If you have questions or comments, let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org. We would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcast and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattlemen.
Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work.