Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-06T18:51:50.492Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Field epidemiology to manage BRD risk in beef cattle production systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2014

David R. Smith
David R. Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Pathobiology and Population Medicine, Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State, Mississippi, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: dsmith@cvm.msstate.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Field disease investigations can help to identify patterns of disease that lead to causal hypotheses and, hopefully, effective disease risk management strategies. The most common way of doing this would be to characterize the outbreak by subject, time, and space. One of the perplexing animal health problems on some beef cattle ranches is the occurrence of pneumonia in calves prior to weaning in conditions of little stress and relative isolation. Field investigation of outbreaks of pneumonia in ranch calves prior to weaning has revealed patterns of sporadic illness in calves less than 30 days of age, and rapidly occurring outbreaks in calves 90–150 days of age. We speculate that the causes of these two patterns may be failure of passive transfer resulting in more sporadic cases in very young calves, or a large proportion of the population losing maternal antibody protection (i.e. losing herd immunity) resulting in rapid and widespread onset of pneumonia in older calves.

Keywords

bovine respiratory diseasefield investigationrisk assessmentoutbreak
Type
Review Article
Information
Animal Health Research Reviews , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 180 - 183
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Gay, JM (2006). Determining cause and effect in herds. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 22: 125–147.Google Scholar
Hancock, DD and Wikse, SE (1988). Investigation planning and data gathering. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 4: 1–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lessard, PR (1988). The characterization of disease outbreaks. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 4: 17–32.Google Scholar
Rae, DO (2006). Assessing performance of cow-calf operations using epidemiology. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 22: 53–74.Google Scholar
Rothman, KJ (1976). Causes. American Journal of Epidemiology 104: 587–592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sanderson, MW (2006). Designing and running clinical trials on farms. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 22: 103–123.Google Scholar
Shott, S (2011). Designing studies that answer questions. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 238: 55–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, DR (2012). Field disease diagnostic investigation of neonatal calf diarrhea. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 28: 465–481.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
USDA (2008). Beef 2007–08, Part I: Reference of Beef Cow-calf Management Practices in the United States, 2007–08. USDA-APHIS-VS, CEAH. Fort Collins, CO #N512–1008.Google Scholar
Waldner, CL and Campbell, JR (2006). Disease outbreak investigation in food animal practice. Veterinary Clinics of North America, Food Animal Practice 22: 75–101.Google Scholar