 Industry Commentary
Herd from the Field
"I'll test the cows and if they are negative the calves will be OK."
A negative calf means a negative cow, but a negative cow doesn't mean her calf will be negative.
"I vaccinate my cows so I don't have a problem with BVD."
Vaccines are an integral part of a BVD control program; however, no vaccine is 100% effective and any vaccine may fail if the challenge is great enough. To effectively control BVD you must test and vaccinate to avoid unexpected infections and creation of persistently infected animals.
"I'll just put all notches in one bag."
This will cause more work if there is a positive as you will have to go back and notch all the calves again to find the positive individual calf.
"I think I'll freeze them and let the buyer pay for the testing next fall."
First, we have tested dry samples frozen for 30 days, but do not feel comfortable beyond that. Second, if you have a PI in your calves, it will have exposed your cows during breeding. This creates a higher risk that you will have more or continued challenges with next years calves. We recommend testing calves before bull turn out and getting rid of PIs before breeding.
"Freezer bags sure are handy to put the notches in."
They may be handy, but they create a challenge in the lab. We use the redtop tubes to ease the sampling procedure and accurate data transfer in our lab.
"I bought a $1500 heifer that just tested positive, what should I do?"
We recommend that you contact the farm or ranch that you purchased the animal from. The animal should not be used for breeding because it will produce a PI calf and should be sent to slaughter as there is no problem with the beef. The PI animal was created on the ranch of origin and they need to know to help them clean up their herd. It is also important to keep in mind the risk when purchasing animals for breeding from unknown herds. We recommend that the ranchers buy breeding animals that have been tested previously for BVD PI status and only negative animals are purchased.
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