Vaccinating Cows

[cowman]

Well I don't go around vaccinating for anything I don't need? I don't vaccinate for IBR...I get it and then you really have to go to town! Neighbor had a wild feeder get in with my cows about a dozen years ago and it was a wreck, big time! Ever since then I've had to vaccinate for IBR.
I sure don't vaccinate more than most.

[bward]

We vaccinate calf-hood, weaning , and yearling. A few years ago we decided to have the vet take some random blood samples as he was preg checking. It was an eye opener. The older cows ( 5 ) had very low levels of BVD titres.... and some low levels of something else... So now we routinely revac them every two years.

[dalek]

We used to vaccinate the Holsteins with Triangle 9 every 12 months but found that with dairy cattle the recommendations don't give them enough coverage, too many people started having BVD trouble with vaccinated cattle because the extra stress of milk production reduced the effect of the vaccine. Common practice until now has been to vaccinate every 6 months, but now we've started having lepto problems by 6 months and we've moved to every 4 months. Calves and heifers every 6 months.

[GrnAsMoss]

Back in the 80's we lost 5 big calves just before weaning. Over the years since then we've spent tons of money on Blackleg/8 way& IBR/PI3, more recently HSomnus and Corona/scours vaccs. I think of vaccinations as an insurance policy for calves. Not so much cows as you know, they get a broader immunity to bugs as they get older and exposed to more and more diseases. I would rather spend $150/bottle and plan for that purchase than have a large death loss and not be prepared for that.
Now in the face of BSE God only knows what to do, even now I think he's scratching his head.

[kato]

We, up till this fall, bought feeders to background. They bring everything under the sun into the yard, so our own cattle get vaccinated for everything under the sun!

Calves - Pfizer gold program at pasture turnout. Booster in the fall. Works like a charm, even with snot nosed auction mart riff raff over the fence.

Cows - Cattlemaster 4 in the spring. We would prefer a pre-breeding live shot, but it's not feasable to put them through the chute that early. Easier to get them on the way up the chute to the truck. We use Scourguard 3KC as well. It has a clostridium component to it. We're not sure how much clostridium is involved with calf scours, but there's evidence that it is involved to a certain extent.

It's a lot cheaper to prevent a problem than to try and fix it later.