Anticipating Sickness Works
On Ranch To Rail Consignees

By David Bowser

AMARILLO — The researchers call it "preshipment metaphylaxis." The cowboys call it "keeping the calves headed to the feedyard from getting sick."

"Metaphylaxis is intervention before you have disease symptoms," explains Dr. Ted McCollum, a beef cattle specialist with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. "The whole idea was to see if we could treat these cattle before they reached the feedyard."

McCollum, coordinator of the Ranch to Rail North Program in the Texas Panhandle, says the program is involved in research trying to develop preventive measures for respiratory illness in cattle arriving at the feedyard. They're trying to treat shipping fever before it happens.

The Texas Agricultural Extension Service, Roche Animal Health and Hi Pro Feeds for the past two years have been working on feeding some Ranch to Rail cattle a small amount of antibiotic at the ranch prior to shipping.

"It is something we were doing to see if we could change the health of the cattle," McCollum says.

In 1996, Roche Animal Health received permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use aureomycin or chlortetracycline in feed for respiratory disease prevention. Under FDA approval, one gram of aureomycin can be fed for each 100 pounds of body weight each day for five days.

"You can feed at this level for five days, but you can't feed it longer than that," McCollum says.

McCollum used it prior to shipping cattle to the feedyard, he said, "but there are feedyards using it for five days after cattle arrive."

Other feedyards, he adds, will wait until three or four days after arrival, shortly before they expect to begin having "pulls," or sick cattle, then feed it for five days.

"It's a preventive to help build up antibiotic levels in the blood to help ward off disease challenges."

Although this year's results haven't been tabulated, the numbers as of Feb. 17 appear to reflect the success of the 1996-97 Ranch to Rail Preshipment Metaphylaxis Program.

"I don't think things are going to change significantly," McCollum said.

As with many new programs and products, it's not a cure-all, but there does appear to be a significant difference.

Overall, 26.9 percent of the Ranch to Rail North cattle had to be pulled and treated for health problems in the 1997-98 program. Of the cattle that had to be pulled, 31.8 percent had to be treated more than once. In fact, they averaged 4.6 treatments for those cattle that were pulled.

The medical costs per head treated averaged $26.18. Spread across all the cattle, the medical costs averaged $7.02 per head.

As of Feb. 17, 13 animals had died and four had to be railed.

Of the cattle in the aureomycin study, cattle treated with the antibiotic prior to shipping had lower sickness numbers and treatment costs.

This year, 162 cattle from six ranches were involved in the aureomycin study. Eighty-two cattle were fed one gram of aureomycin per 100 pounds of body weight each day for five days prior to shipping. Eighty cattle followed programs without the antibiotic. The aureomycin was delivered in Hi-Pro Pneumonia Knocker feed.

"We went in on each ranch and randomly divided the calves five days before shipment," McCollum says. "One group received this Pneumonia Knocker from Hi Pro that contains the one gram of aureomycin. The other half just stayed on the routine program for the ranch."

When producers first sign up, the Ranch to Rail officials asked for ranchers with at least 15 head of cattle coming into the program so they could be split in half.

"The smallest group of cattle I think we took was a ranch with 10," McCollum says of the 1996-97 program. "We had five and five, but then we had another ranch that had about 40 head, so they split 20 and 20. And we had a bunch in between."

This year, the minimum size group was about 15 head. One ranch consigned 68 cattle, so they had two groups with 34 in each group.

All the cattle were from Texas in 1997. This year they had one set of cattle from Oklahoma. They also had cattle from south of Uvalde in the study and some cattle from east of Dallas.

"There were some other cattle from around Sonora, so it's kind of spread around," McCollum says. "All of these cattle would have been the way we assemble those Ranch to Rail cattle. The producers trailer them into a central location and those cattle are co-mingled with everybody else's, put on trucks and shipped out here."

It is typical of the way most cattle are handled on their way to a feedyard.

"They were under transportation stress when they were loaded on the trucks and hauled out here," McCollum says. "We tracked them while they were in Randall County Feedyard. Pulls and everything else were just like the feedlot cowboys would normally do it."

Of the 82 head of cattle receiving aureomycin in their feed prior to shipping, 24.4 percent had to be pulled at least once for treatment of health-related problems. Of the 80 head not fed aureomycin prior to shipping, 39.5 percent had to be pulled. Of those pulled, 10 percent of the pre-treated cattle had to be treated more than once. Of the cattle without the preshipment treatment, 28.1 percent had to be treated more than once in the feedyard. The average number of treatments per head treated was 3.6 versus 4.6 for cattle that had not been fed aureomycin.

Medical costs per head treated for the aureomycin cattle was $19.91 while the non-aureomycin cattle suffered medical costs of $26.44. Spread across all the cattle in each group, those costs averaged $4.86 for the preshipment treated cattle versus $10.58 for the cattle not treated prior to shipment.

Each group reported one death. The pretreated group had one railer. The non-pretreated group of cattle had none.

This year's numbers were similar to the 1996-97 Ranch to Rail aureomycin study.

In that study, 11 ranches provided 230 head of cattle. The cattle were split into groups of 116 that were given aureomycin prior to shipping and 114 that weren't.

In 1997, out of the 116 that were fed aureomycin prior to shipping, 12.9 percent had to be pulled for health reasons at the feedyard. Of the 114 cattle that didn't receive the aureomycin pretreatment, 23.7 percent had to be pulled.

"We almost cut the treatment in half by premedicating the cattle," McCollum says. "For the treatments per head, that is for every calf that was treated, on average it was 2.5 (aureomycin treated cattle) versus 3.3 (for the non-aureomycin treated cattle), so you cut almost one treatment out."

The 1996-97 medical cost for each animal treated in the feedyard averaged $20.83 for the pretreated cattle versus $26.35 for the non-pretreated cattle. Spreading that cost over the groups of healthy and sick cattle, those costs averaged $2.69 for the pretreated cattle versus $6.24 for the non-pretreated cattle.

As with this year's cattle, each group had one death. The non-pretreated cattle had three railers. The pretreated cattle had none.

The cost of feeding aureomycin before shipping, McCollum says, is about two dollars a head for the five-day course. To reflect this in the final analysis, he says, that two dollars would be added back to the medical cost per head for the total number of cattle fed the antibiotic.

The would still mean the medical cost per head for the cattle fed aureomycin prior to shipping would be less than the medical cost for the non-pretreated cattle. In 1996-97, it would raise the pretreated cattle medical costs per head total from $2.69 to $4.69, still less than the $6.24 for the non-pretreated animals. In 1997-98, it would raise the pretreated cattle medical costs from $4.86 to $6.86, again less than the $10.58 for the non-pretreated cattle.

"There is still considerable savings," McCollum says.

Since all the data isn't tabulated yet, one of the questions that still remains is how overall performance for the two groups of cattle compares. Previous Ranch to Rail data shows cattle that never get sick perform better and grade better.

"The fewer of these that are getting sick, then theoretically they ought to be performing better and grading better than the non-treated cattle," McCollum says. "We've got performance data on the cattle. We just haven't gotten to the point of summarizing that yet, but you should have a push in performance and grade on the pretreated cattle."

The drawback to the study, McCollum says, is the number of cattle. He says he would feel more comfortable with the results if more cattle were involved in the research.

"We really don't have big enough numbers to show a huge difference right now," he says.