 Herd Mentality Newsletter
Guy Loneragan Interview
Guy Loneragan, an epidemiologist in the Feedlot Research Group at West Texas A&M University, recently published the article “Trends in Mortality Ratios Among Cattle In U.S. Feedlots” in the Journal of the American Veterinarian Association (April, 2001; Volume 219; page 1122-1127). The article summarized the findings from his six-year study of deathloss in U.S. feedlots, from 1993 through 1999.
Q. What trends did your study discover about the U.S. feedlot industry?
A. My co-authors and I analyzed six years worth of data that included information on 21.8 million placements from 121 feedlots. From 1994 through 1999, cattle mortality in U.S. feedlots rose by 40%. The study classified the cause for mortality among cattle as respiratory-related, digestive related or “other”. Our analysis found that respiratory-related death rose 46%, while digestive-related and “other” categories remained relatively flat. These data offers a unique view of the state of the feedlot industry, as we are not aware of any other nationwide longitudinal study of its kind.
Q. What has been your reaction to the study's findings?
A. The study documented that death loss has increased dramatically, which is causing significant financial loss in the industry. The challenges that U.S. feedlots faced at the start of 1994 are not disappearing, but rather continuing to grow.
Q. Why has the feedlot industry not been able to improve cattle management in health related areas?
A. Our study didn't evaluate the cause of the increase in mortality over time. We know that we have used increasingly better vaccines, antibiotics and other techniques to benefit the health of the herd, but mortality continued to increase. It seems likely that the feedlot placements are more immunologicaly susceptible, presumably because they are younger. But there is no specific answer that I can offer as to why mortality is on the increase.
Q. What is the significance of the increase respiratory-related mortality in your study?
A. The more we explore bovine respiratory disease, the more we understand that we need to invest in this area. Even if you can reduce mortality, those that become sick don't gain weight as well as animals that never developed respiratory disease and still cause significant financial loss. Currently we don't have a way to address high-risk animals beyond blanket administration of antimicrobials to an entire pen of animals. The real dilemma is to accurately identify those animals that need antibiotics and differentiate them from those that don't need the antibiotics. In other words, we really need a better system to both evaluate at-risk animals and treat them accordingly.
Q. Are there advantages for a cattle operation to know which animals have a high risk of getting sick?
A. If you can identify those animals that are high risk, you can invest in managing the health of the herd more wisely. By selectively targeting care and treatment to those animals that will get the most benefit, you can achieve the optimal profit with the least amount of investment.
Q. What significant trends do you see in the industry that could have an impact on the mortality rate in U.S. feedlots?
A. There seems to be an increased level of accountability — to the government, consumers, and within industry alliances — about the overall well being of the animal, the use of antibiotics, a valuable resource for human and veterinary medicine, and technology in a prudent and appropriate manner. Another significant trend affecting the industry is the increasingly short supply of trained feedlot cowboys who are the primary resource for identifying sick animals. With the fewer number of trained cowboys and the increasing number of cattle being evaluated per cowboy, the ability of identifying sick cattle is getting more tenuous. A way of profiling the health of animals in feedlots into those that are more likely to get sick and those that are less likely to get sick would allow feedlots to separate high-risk animals in a group from low-risk animals. Ultimately, feedlots could allocate a greater proportion of the limited cowboys' hours to those pens that need them the most.
Q. Will the emerging national cattle identification program help in this regard?
A. The national ID program is part of the trend towards accountability mentioned above. In its current state it is designed to protect against foreign disease primarily. Ultimately, individual animal ID, national or private, when coupled with a profiling system provides an advantage of identifying and differentiating animals that need help and monitor treatment efficacy in a prudent way. In other words, we would be able to differentiate and manage high-risk individuals rather than high-risk groups.
Q. As you are actively involved in this industry, where do you see things progressing from here?
A. The industry is searching for solutions and is interested in exploring new ways to approach herd mortality issues. A new way to manage and improve the health of cattle is needed. Profiling animal health will increasingly be the goal. For many years the cattle industry has had experience with pharmaceutical companies reinventing the wheel in terms of antibiotics or vaccines, but ultimately we haven't seen dramatic improvement in the health of the Nation's feedlot cattle. We need better way to manage and monitor the health of cattle.
|
