Mitigating risk within your herd through a vaccine program

How to decide which diseases to vaccinate against at your farm and the goal of vaccination

 

Vaccines are a tool that many producers rely on to maintain herd health. Though vaccine use is a general practice for many herds, what works for a 2,000 head dairy may not be logistically or financially feasible for a 30 head Guernsey show herd. What questions should producers mull over and bring to their on-farm team? This article will share how to decide which diseases to vaccinate against at your farm and the goal of vaccination.

Vaccines are utilized globally by many livestock producers. These are modern marvels, a tool that any producer can use to mitigate risk on their operation. Now when we say mitigate risk, we don’t mean stock options or 401K’s, we mean foreseeable conditions on a farm. Producers can ask themselves “What threats to our animals and our profitability can we see coming down that pike?” The next step after a producer identifies their potential sources of on-farm risk is to work with their farm team (veterinarian, Extension educator, financial professional, etc.) to plan for it. Any farm can evaluate which vaccines are best suited to their situation based on several criteria.

* The likelihood of disease exposure is high, or the risk of unprotected exposure to a disease is high.

* The vaccine is effective.

* The cost of the vaccine is justified.

The goal of vaccinating is to protect the herd from harmful diseases for health, economic and welfare reasons. The protection offered by a given vaccination hinges on an animal’s immune system developing memory. The goal of each vaccination and booster is to provide the protection needed by triggering the immune system to recognize disease. Now most vaccines don’t prevent the infection from occurring, instead they prevent or aide in the prevention of clinical disease. Vaccines give an animal’s immune system a jump start on fighting back, helping it from becoming overwhelmed. Now it is important to note that vaccines do not mean an animal is impervious. If the pathogen load is exceptionally high or the animal is immune-compromised the vaccine may fail to protect against a given clinical disease.

Hopefully this article has given you some guidance as to what vaccines to discuss with your on-farm team, as well as what to expect after vaccine implementation. The information for the above article was from UMN Extension (https://z.umn.edu/CattleVaccineBasics). Residents of Stearns, Benton, and Morrison counties can direct questions to either my email (adam1744@umn.edu) or call my desk phone at (320) 255-6169 x 3.