Vaccine effectiveness depends on livestock management

Vaccines are truly game changing when it comes to animal health. Products can help protect your herd from diseases that, at their core, cost the farm, whether it be in loss of productivity for the cow, increased veterinary costs to keep the herd healthy, or premature death.

However, vaccines are only part of the solution when it comes to herd health. While highly effective, they won’t be as effective if there are lapses in other farm management practices.

“It’s important to understand that vaccines are only a tool, and other issues can impact the effectiveness of a farm’s vaccine protocols,” says Jen Roberts, veterinarian at Boehringer Ingelheim. 

The overarching issue when it comes to vaccines and management is knowing how an animal responds to a vaccine. How well the animal develops an immune response can be impacted by stress levels as well as how often the cow is presented with a disease challenge.

The first step is to take a systematic approach when looking at your herd. “Look at the entire life cycle, from birth through the animal’s entire life on the farm,” Roberts says. “Determine the areas where you can make improvements.”

Roberts says colostrum management is critical in getting the animal off to the right start. “Research indicates that colostrum management can impact the cow’s performance once they get into the lactating herd,” she says. “If the cow stumbles right out of the gate, we can see issues down the road that may lead to reduced immune response and increased susceptibility to disease.”

Conditions

The overall cleanliness of the farm is another area that can impact vaccine effectiveness. 

“This includes the entire farm, including the maternity pen, hutches, post-weaning pens, and lactating pens. There are certain diseases that are going to be present in unsanitary environments and can cause ongoing health problems, such as E. coli, salmonella, or cryptosporidia,” Roberts says. “When the level of disease overwhelms the animal’s immune system, farms can experience outbreaks. We don’t have vaccines for all diseases on the farm, so we have to focus on cleanliness and sanitation to reduce the impacts of disease stressors that can negatively impact the animal’s health.”

Overcrowding issues can also cause problems when it comes to immune response. Overcrowded animals are under higher levels of stress and can be subjected to more disease pressure.

Another factor is ensuring a good nutrition program. “It takes a lot of energy for a cow to develop an effective immune response. We want to ensure that we have a good nutrition management program so the cows have the nutritional support they need,” Roberts adds. 

Biosecurity

Roberts notes that the farm’s overall biosecurity issues can have a huge impact on herd health and need to be included in the overall herd health discussion. 

“What are your biosecurity measures? Do you have new additions coming in? What are your protocols for managing those new additions? If you are bringing in animals from an unknown source and do not know the health status of those animals, you could be bringing in other diseases that could present a disease risk to the entire herd,” Roberts says. “When you have a well-managed farm with good vaccine protocols in place for disease prevention, that is reflected in a reduced susceptibility to disease.”

Identifying disease challenges

Farms are not immune to disease outbreaks, even with the best vaccine protocols in place. When a disease outbreak occurs, the first step is to review the protocol compliance and recent events around the farm to see why the disease outbreak is occurring. 

“My first step is a full diagnosis to identify the farm’s disease challenge rather than jumping immediately into a vaccine change,” Roberts says. “The goal is to determine what we need to do to ensure good management and protocol compliance to try and prevent diseases in the future and to keep the animals healthy.”