Calving Challenges, Vaccination Decisions, and Managing Liver Flukes in Cattle

Summary

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Episode Overview

Theme:
This episode of BCI Cattle Chat (April 17, 2026) brings together veterinary experts from the Beef Cattle Institute at Kansas State University for an engaging discussion on listener-submitted questions. The team explores the origins of the phrase “it’s a fluke,” then dives into three major beef cattle health topics:

• Calving difficulties and the role of cattle handling in malpresentations
• Strategies and best practices for vaccinating purchased calves
• Managing liver flukes, including differences in species and control options

The conversation is lively, evidence-based, and peppered with practical insights and anecdotes from the team’s own veterinary experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Phrase “It’s a Fluke” — Etymology Segment

[00:12 – 02:59]

• The team briefly debates the origin of the phrase. Brad presents two main theories:
  • A “fluke” as a lucky shot in billiards (which brought the term into broader usage).
  • The “fluke” as part of a ship’s anchor, which may or may not catch, inspiring the term for unexpected outcomes.
• Notable Moment:
  Todd jokingly blames “William the Conqueror” for changing the English language ([01:58]).

Quote:

“That theory doesn’t really explain where the word fluke comes from ... There's a portion of an anchor, like a ship's anchor, that's called a fluke ... And that may be where the origin came from.”
— Brad, [02:18]

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1. Calving Difficulty and Cattle Handling

Listener Question: Does handling influence malpresentation and dystocia in cattle?

[03:02 – 09:54]

Main Points:

• Malpresentation and Dystocia:
  • Most dystocias in heifers: Fetal-dam size mismatch.
  • Most dystocias in mature cows: Malpresentation (leg or head back).
• Rates & Clustering:
  • Expected malpresentation rate: ~5% or less in cows ([05:07]).
  • Clusters do occur but are hard to explain.
• Possible Risk Factors for Malpresentation:
  • Number of calves (twins raise risk)
  • Sire genetics (possibly linked to instinctual behavior and physical structure)
  • Larger calves are more likely to present incorrectly.
  • Handling method is not clearly linked to malpresentation, but low-stress handling is recommended.
• Handling Effects:
  • Loud or rough handling could delay labor, which isn't good for cow or calf.
  • No strong evidence linking high-stress handling to increased malpresentation, but the team endorses low-stress handling for overall calving outcomes.

Quotes:

“If I'm rough, loud, those types of things, I might delay parturition, delay the birthing process. And that's probably not good for the calf or the mother.”
— Bob, [08:44]

“If you see a leg out and there’s no progress, don’t wait on that.”
— Brad, [09:29]

• Practical Tip:
  • Intervene early: Every 15 minutes, look for significant calving progress or address possible malpresentations quickly.

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2. Vaccination Decisions for Sale Barn Calves

Listener Question: What’s a common vaccination protocol for 500lb sale barn steers with no prior history?

[09:57 – 18:39]

Main Points:

• Vaccination Basics:
  • “Five-way” vaccines typically target respiratory viruses; “seven/eight-way” vaccines are for clostridial diseases (e.g., blackleg).
  • Vaccinate against both clostridial and respiratory pathogens.
• Timing of Vaccination:
  • Administer viral vaccines soon after arrival, when disease risk is highest.
  • Clostridial vaccines are often given at the same time for convenience.
• Vaccines as Insurance:
  • Vaccines are an insurance policy, not immediate protection or treatment.
  • Immunity takes time (particularly for killed vaccines, which require two shots).
  • Vaccinating stressed or sick calves on arrival may not be effective and can sometimes do more harm than good.
• Modified Live vs. Killed Vaccines:
  • Modified live vaccines offer faster immunity but have risks (e.g., not safe for pregnant cows).
  • Killed virus vaccines are safer under certain conditions and can be effective boosters.

Quotes:

“Giving my cattle a vaccine does not make them any more healthy. All it does is protect them against a very specific set of foreseeable circumstances.”
— Todd, [13:09]

“If they come in sick and I give them vaccine, I need to manage that differently than just giving them vaccine and hoping that will make them better.”
— Brad, [14:43]

“Don’t think of your health program as your vaccination program ... I want to get them eating and drinking and resting as soon as possible. Those are the things ... that are going to give me a benefit quicker than a vaccine.”
— Bob, [17:07]

• Practical Tip:
  • Discuss protocols with your own veterinarian who knows your cattle and operation.
  • Focus on animal comfort and nutrition immediately upon arrival; tailor vaccine strategies to individual herd risks and histories.

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3. Managing Liver Flukes in Cattle

Listener Question (from South Africa): How to manage liver flukes in cattle?

[18:39 – 23:17]

Main Points:

• Types of Liver Flukes:
  • Fasciola hepatica (common in cattle) uses aquatic snails as intermediary hosts.
  • Fascioloides magna (more common in deer/elk) can infect cattle; Todd has experience with this from Alberta.
• Transmission & Management:
  • Grazing marshy or riparian areas increases fluke risk due to snail presence.
  • Control strategies include:
    • Medical treatment (e.g., triclobendazole, where available)
    • Restricting cattle from snail-infested wetlands (e.g., fencing off marshy ground)
    • Understanding the fluke species' life cycle and aiming to break it rather than rely solely on treatment
• International Considerations:
  • Local species and management conditions vary—seek local expert advice.

Quotes:

“A lot of it came down to understanding the ecology, the life cycle of that parasite and trying to find ways to interrupt that life cycle is a better long term strategy than simply trying to just put a little bit more air in the tire every time it got flat, so to speak.”
— Todd, [21:45]

“That would be one of the first steps is figure out which one you’re dealing with and what is the carrier state and can I move away from it?”
— Brad, [22:18]

• Practical Tip:
  • Work with local veterinarians and experts to tailor management strategies.

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• History of "It's a Fluke" phrase
  Brad summarizes two leading theories and how it relates (or doesn’t!) to cattle, providing a light start to the episode [02:59].

• Todd’s dry wit on manipulating facts:

  “I'd probably be willing to fib a little and say, ‘Oh yeah, cow handling is definitely associated with dystocias.’” [09:18]

• Vaccine Insight:
  Todd compares vaccination during disease outbreaks to trying to buy fire insurance while a fire is at your door [13:07].

• Humorous Calving Story Outro:
  Brad tells a joke about a backwards calf and a child’s unexpected question, closing the main discussion with a laugh [23:17].

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origin of "It's a Fluke" Phrase: [00:12 – 02:59]
• Calving Difficulties & Handling: [03:02 – 09:54]
• Vaccination Decisions: [09:57 – 18:39]
• Managing Liver Flukes: [18:39 – 23:17]

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Summary

The hosts provide nuanced, practical advice on common beef cattle challenges by blending scientific literature, real-world experience, and good humor. Core recommendations include practicing low-stress cattle handling, vaccinating with a strategic and individualized approach, and focusing on breaking parasite life cycles for fluke management. Their guidance is grounded in evidence, with a strong caveat for listeners to always consult local veterinary expertise for herd-specific solutions.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, welcome to BCI Cattle Chat. I'm Brad White. Happy to have you with us and happy to have our crew here in the studio. Morning, Dustin. Good morning, Bob.

[B]

Hello, everybody.

[A]

Todd, buenas. Todd's stuck in Spanish mode, so we'll try to get him out before the end of the episode. But appreciate you guys joining us and appreciate you sending questions. We've got a whole series of listener questions today. We've got one about calving difficulty, we've got one about vaccination, and we've got one about flukes. So if you would like to send us a question, you could send us a [e-mail]. speaking of flukes, that stirred our question for the day, which is the phrase, it's a fluke. Where did that come from? What's the origin of that phrase? Because while you're thinking probably liver flukes in cattle, that's not. That's not correct. I'm just going to give you that one. So any ideas? And I'll accept a couple different answers, but it appears that it's unclear.

[B]

So basically, the way I would use that word is, you know, something odd, unexpected, a stroke of luck, stroke of lock. So I don't use the word fluke for anything other than liver flukes. So if it has. If it doesn't have anything to do with cattle. Liver flukes.

[A]

No.

[B]

Which you would assume the rest of the society would often refer to cattle. Little liver flukes. But no, I have no idea.

[A]

I'm gonna say. Is it golf? Golf. That's a good guess, but it's wrong.

[C]

Yeah, I'm gonna guess that there was an Anglo Saxon word once that sounded a lot like fluke, and it meant something that was like a random or unusual occurrence. And then that ding norm. William the Conqueror came in and introduced French to the English language. And then we stopped using that word.

[B]

So you're all.

[C]

Except for in that particular instance, you're

[B]

going back to William the Conqueror, man.

[C]

Most of English changed at William the Conqueror. You just got it. You can't count that guy out.

[A]

So there's two. There's two theories that I found. Theory one, and Dustin was closest to it with golf, was that it was actually billiards. And if you had a really lucky shot, they said it's a fluke.

[B]

That's the only kind of shot I have.

[A]

That theory doesn't explain where the word fluke comes from. The second theory, which actually could be the precursor is there's a portion of an anchor, like a ship's anchor. That's called a fluke. And that fluke's job, the part that comes out from the side of the anchor, is to catch the ground as you're anchoring a ship. So it's a fluke because it would catch the ground and it wouldn't always catch the ground. So that may be where the origin came from. And then translated to billiards, it is pretty clear that billiards is the way that it got into the US Is through billiards language is calling it. It's a fluke.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

So nothing to do with liver flukes, but I thought that was interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We'll come back to liver flukes a little bit later in the episode, but I want to start out with the first listener question. And I think this is an interesting one. And the question is, does cattle handling influence mal presentation in or that could lead to dystocia. So malpositioning of the calf where the head's back or legs back, does it matter how we handle those calves? And the listener noted, sometimes when there's somebody that's not low stress checking the cattle, we seem to have more mal presentations. So, Bob, I'm going to turn to you first. This is a ethereal type question.

[B]

Yeah, it is. And, and I, I really don't know the answer to this. So malpresentation and the most common are like one leg back, sometimes two leg backs or a head back, those types of things. And I would agree with this listener in that sometimes it seems like we have a cluster of them. You know, I mean, it should just be random and just every, every few cows, something like that. I don't know why the clusters occur. A lot of times we want to blame it on something, but it's not consistently associated with most of the things I can think because some of the questions are, well, maybe it's feedstuffs, maybe it's handling those types of things. And I'm not going to say that's not true, but we certainly it's not a strong enough pattern to really see an outcome. So I think Todd's got a few things that probably really do affect this, but I'm stuck with, yeah, sometimes there's more than we expect in a cluster. But it's real hard for me to figure out exactly why. But if you want to blame lack of low stress handling, it's a great teachable moment to reinforce low stress handling of these mama cows. And I think that's in general a good idea.

[A]

So let me, let me follow up before we go To Todd. So if we think about in heifers or cattle having their first calf, most dystocia is due to fetal dam size mismatch. And you may see 13%, 14%.

[B]

Yeah. And some of those show up as a head back or something like that just because there's not quite enough room in the pelvis for everything all at once.

[A]

Most of our dystocia in cows is malpresentation. What would be your expected rate?

[B]

That's a good question. Todd may have a more accurate answer. I'm going to say 5% or less.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, it's common enough that you know you've got cows, you'll run into it, but it's certainly most, most cows can have the calf without. Without assistance.

[C]

So I looked up a couple of articles on this just because I was curious and I'd seen this in practice. You'll have occasional clusters, like Bob said, where it seems like you end up with a lot of a certain type of malpresentation. It makes you think, geez, there must be something going on here to have this many show up all at the same time. So one of these was a review article of malpresentations in dairy cattle that was published in the aughts. And the other was a study that was done on beef cattle in Colorado back in the 70s and 80s published in the early 90s. And you know, a couple things. They found probably anywhere from 10 to 20%. 20% would be probably the high end of the distribution dist. 10% probably be on the low end of calves that require some assistance. And to Brad's point, most of those are going to be because of a mismatch in fetal size and maternal pelvic size. That is where most of the dystocias come from. But on the malpresentation side, there were a few risk factors that they find that were associated with a higher rate of malpresentation dystocia. And then they were a little interesting. One is the number of calves in the uterus. And that's one.

[B]

If you have twins.

[C]

Yeah, if you have twins, they don't come out right. They don't come out right. And that, that lines up with my biases. I pulled a lot of calves in practice. It seems like if I had a calf, if I ever went and got called out for like a head back, for instance, which was one of my favorite malpresentations to correct, I almost always would find a twin behind that calf when I had a head back. And that's something that these studies also Seem to show is that, you know, if you have more than one calf in there, the probability of a malpresentation is high. And then the other one that was kind of interesting that was in both of those studies was the sire of the calf was associated with the probability of that calf having a malpresentation and that sire within breed for the beef cattle study. And I, and, and I think it was that way for the dairy study as well. And I don't have the reason for that. And these were observational studies, so we don't really know for sure why that is. If I had to hypothesize, I would say that much of what gets a calf into the pelvis is instinctual behavior on the calf's part to put their legs up, to put their head up position. It's an instinctual response on the calf's part. And that has to come from the genetics that is coded into their genetics. And so if you have a sire that their coding isn't quite right or doesn't quite match up with the dam's genetics, you could see some, some more

[B]

presentations problems, you know, and if, if it's associated with the sire, then that maybe is reason. Sometimes we see some clusters in a ranch. And I think in some of those studies, you know, size, weight was affected in the bigger calves, more likely to be in a malposition type of a thing. And maybe that's associated with the sire as well, both the size and even kind of the shape, the head and shoulders and those kinds of things. So there could be something just about the physical structure of that calf that makes it less likely to enter the pelvis correctly.

[C]

Right. So yeah, for sure. Well, we know that certain sires have, you know, calving ease epd, which is

[B]

more than just weight.

[C]

It's more than just weight. It's shape of the shoulder, shape of the head. So there's, I mean, lots of factors that could contribute to that. And this is all we're just theorizing here. We don't really know why that neither

[B]

one of us have really heard of cattle handling, doing that. But, but again, cattle handling is still important. And so, you know, handling and some of the things that I worry about when we're talking about the calving side is if I'm rough, loud, those types of things, I might delay parturition, delay the birthing process. And that's probably not good for the calf or the mother. So I still think this is a good place around calving to do low stress cattle handling. I'm not sure I associate that with a leg back or a head back, but it's still a good idea.

[C]

Yeah, I was gonna say I'd probably be willing to fib a little and say, oh yeah, cow handling is definitely associated with dystocias.

[B]

Be more careful to make people do it.

[C]

Yeah, for sure.

[A]

I think those are all important. And you guys hit the main topics there. And the big thing is early intervention. Right. So if you don't see progress, just as a reminder, every 15 minutes you should see significant progress. One of the reasons that you may not is if there's a leg back or a head back and you need to go ahead and intervene, that's not something. If you see a leg out and there's no progress, don't wait on that.

[B]

Yeah, it's not going to correct itself.

[A]

The next question we've got, which is also a good one, was from a producer and maybe an economist, Dustin, because he said, I know the answer to this is always it depends. But he asked about if I'm going to get 500 pound steers from the sale barn, what is a common vaccination program, what are the things that I should think about giving them and when should I give that to them? And I know, and you guys are gonna say there are some factors that it varies on that it depends on. But in general terms, he threw out some vernacular of multiple way vaccines, of four way, a five way, a seven way, an eight way. But. But I'd ask you guys, what are some basics? If you have no history on calves and you're purchasing feeder calves, what are some things you want to control for? So you don't have any history on these specific calves coming from the sale barn. Correct. You don't have any history on these calves coming from the sale barn, but you presumably have some ideas of what could happen to them, disease wise?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Well, a couple of things. And you know, a lot of times we use slang terms that make perfect sense within our ranch or family or even within a veterinary practice, but don't necessarily mean the same thing to everybody. Because in this question he asked that he's heard answers such as a five way vaccine, a seven way vaccine or an eight way vaccine. And a lot of that means how many different germs, how many antigens are in there, how many germs does it protect against? In typical, when I think of a five way vaccine, a lot of times that is a viral vaccine protecting against some of the diseases that contribute to respiratory disease. Whereas when I think of a seven way or an eight way vaccine. A lot of times I'm thinking about a clostridial black leg, those types of diseases. So pretty different. But that being said, a lot of times when I get new calves in, you know, purchase them from the sale bar and they've been relatively recently weaned, those are two classes of disease that I want to vaccinate against, the clostridial diseases and the respiratory viruses. And so those tend to be the vaccines that I'll reach for. The timing is a good question. And you can get three veterinarians in a room and you'll get four or five different opinions on the timing in general. For the, for the viral components of respiratory disease, I want that in there relatively early because the risk is right now it's within the next few days after those calves arrive. So typically we will do those, those viral vaccines pretty soon after arrival that day, the next day, kind of depending on, you know, sometimes it does benefit those calves to get some water, get some hay into them and stuff before we run them through the chute to vaccinate them. But I want to do it relatively soon. The clostridial or the blackleg vaccine, I'm not quite as in much of a hurry, but usually I'll give it the same time I give the virals because that's when I've got the cattle in the chute. I don't know what Todd thinks. Be interested to see if you've got a different idea.

[C]

Well, and I know this disclaimer is probably gonna not be what this listener wants to hear, but these are the types of decisions that really should be made between you and your veterinarian.

[B]

I gotta know the catalog.

[C]

They have to know the situation. But all that being said in general, I will say that I always talk to my clients about vaccines as if they were an insurance policy, because that's really what a vaccine is. Giving my cattle a vaccine does not make them any more healthy. All it does is protect them against a very specific set of foreseeable circumstances. And usually those are very pathogen specific. And in a lot of the diseases we deal with in cattle, especially respiratory disease, it's not so much a pathogen disease as a syndrome that occurs when we have all of these other factors that combine at once. And so you can imagine if I was in a area that was experiencing a lot of wildfires and I tried to buy a fire insurance policy while the fire was bearing down on my property, there's not a lot of insurance companies that are going to go for that, right? And sometimes I feel like when we vaccinate cattle on arrival, especially if they're high risk cattle, it's like we're trying to buy a insurance policy when the fire's already at the door. It doesn't always work out very well for us. So, you know, I think they have a place. But keep in mind that giving a vaccine to cattle is protecting them against things that are going to happen at soonest a month from now, maybe three weeks. Giving it to them right now when they're getting to the, to the. Your place is not going to protect them against diseases can happen in the next week or two. And in fact challenging their immune system with a vaccine might actually make things worse. So you have to keep. Those are some general principles to keep in mind.

[A]

So. So your response is a little bit maybe counterintuitive. If they're at high risk or currently sick, giving them the vaccine now, even though that's my biggest time of danger, may not be as helpful as later because it's not going to prevent the disease. If they come in sick and I give them vaccine, I need to manage that differently than just giving them vaccine and hoping that will make them better. Is that what you're saying?

[C]

Correct. The one possible. And I say possible because I don't know if I believe it wholly. I have seen some cases where this seemed to be the case. The one caveat to that or one exception to that would maybe be intranasal vaccines against bovine herpes virus because you get a big interferon response which may or may not be beneficial. I've seen that go both ways. But yes, in general, if I'm giving it to them now when they're currently in the process of fighting off infection, I honestly don't know if we're doing those cattle any favors.

[A]

But how long, Bob, does it take for. And there are different types of vaccines that we use and we haven't delved into that. But you have to also clarify, are we talking about a modified live viral vaccine? Are we talking about a kill viral vaccine? But give me an in general answer, how long does it take them to build some immunity? And it's a little bit different by the type.

[B]

Yeah, it is. We tend to get a little bit faster immunity with a modified live vaccine. We possibly a little bit faster with some of the intranasals. If we're using a killed vaccine, the way it's taught is you need two doses, you know, three weeks apart or so to really start building the immunity. And the problem is you ask the question when do I get some immunity? I may get some immunity pretty darn fast. It's just not very much. And so it's going to build over time. And it takes the body a little bit of time to, to develop a protective immune response. And so a lot that has to do with, well, how big is the challenge? And in that, maybe for a moderate to low challenge, I develop sufficient protection relatively fast. Within a couple of weeks, if the challenge is going to be higher, then I'm going to need more protection. So it, it gets complicated really fast. And I think one of the things that Todd would agree with me on is don't think of your health program as your vaccination program, because really what I want is I want to get those cattle, I bought them at the sale barn, I want to get them home, I want to get them comfortable, I want to get them eating and drinking and resting as soon as possible. And those are the things I really, really think are important immediately. And they're going to give me a benefit quicker than a vaccine that I would give.

[C]

The only thing I would add to that is sometimes we think of vaccines in terms of modified live being good and killed virus vaccines being not as good. And I would, I would challenge that paradigm. They have their place and they should be used at specific times. There's actually some really good evidence that was published in recent years showing that if you follow up a well boost a well vaccinated modified live series, so they get one or two doses of modified live and then you go to a killed virus vaccine, they actually respond better to the killed vaccine than as a booster than they would if you were to give another modified live. And so killed vaccines definitely have a place. And the other thing I love about killed vaccines is I'm less likely to do harm. And with some of our bovine herpes virus modified live vaccines, I can easily do harm, especially in pregnant animals or in animals that I'm about to turn out to breed. So the modified live virus vaccines are amazing, but they're not innocuous all the time. And you have to be very strategic about when you use them. And sometimes a killed would actually be a better choice. And that's why I say at the beginning of this whole conversation that this is really a conversation that needs to be had with a veterinarian who's got boots on the ground, who knows your operation.

[A]

Absolutely. And I think that's a good opportunity to discuss your health program, not just your vaccines. What's my receiving protocol, what do I do When I get those cattle in. Last question we have and this is actually from South Africa. None of us really have much experience there. It's related to liver flukes. And how do you manage the liver flukes. And Todd, I know you've got some experience here in this area with your time in Alberta and maybe a little bit different because there's two types of liver flukes and maybe start there by telling us what are the types and which one did you deal with.

[C]

Great Brad. So yeah, there are. And the main type we think of when we think of litter liver flukes is a species called Fasciola hepatica and that's a liver fluke that is, is fairly common in cattle and does have an intermediate life stage that involves snails, aquatic snails. And you know, typically cattle that graze in marshy ground are much more prone to that. A lot of the, I believe Fasciola hepatica's main intermediate host is a snail and then in its main reservoir host is the cattle. That's in contrast to Fascioloides magna which is a different type of fluke which actually is more host adapted to cervids. So that would be deer, elk, moose, those types of animals. And actually that's the one I had the most experience with in Alberta because I had clients who lived on the Waterton river riparian area which drains out of Waterton national park. And Waterton national park has a resident herd of elk that pretty much spend their entire life either in Waterton national park or along the Waterton river as it drains out of Waterton national park in my clients pastures. And of course there were rams horns, snails in those pastures and then anybody that had cattle along the river invariably would deal with Fascioloides magnaflukes. It was just a given and it was a constant struggle and they did some, several different things for a while we would, we actually, we had this ability in Canada. I don't think we can do this in the United States. But you could apply for an emergency drug release which allowed us to get a permit to import a drug called Fastinex that I think it was called Triclobendazole is the actual drug name, but Fastinex, it's, it's labeled for use in I believe in Europe and in Australia. But we, we, it wasn't labeled in Canada but we were able to get it for these very specific circumstances. And we would give fastnecks to those cows twice a year and that seemed to help. But it also didn't really solve the base problem, which was we've got snails on the marshy ground. The cattle graze in that marshy ground. Cattle are indiscriminate eaters. They eat a snail, they get the fluke. And, and of course then you have the elk, which they only live along that river corridor or in the national park. And the way that those elk were managed, that's just kind of the way it worked. And they didn't really go anywhere else. And so those elk were just lousy with flukes and they were shedding them all the time and they were picking them back up. And, and so one of the other ways that we dealt with that, it was trying to fence off some of the marshy ground so those cattle didn't graze in those areas where the snails were likely to be present in high numbers. That kind of worked. And it was probably a better long term solution than simply trying to deal with trying to get this drug imported. And it was a, it was a constant fight. But a lot of it came down to understanding the ecology, the life cycle of that parasite and trying to find ways to interrupt that life cycle is a better long term strategy than simply trying to just put a little bit more air in the tire every time it got flat, so to speak.

[A]

Yeah, and I like, I like the way you describe that is, it's a, there's a hierarchy to your decision process and it begins with understanding that there are a couple types of liver flukes. While we refer to them as liver flukes, I need to know which one I'm dealing with. I, I need to know the life cycle of that fluke and then try to break it at some point rather than try to just deal with treating it. Because I'm not going to work my way out of it with treating it with if I have products available. So that would be one of the first steps is figure out which one you're dealing with and what is the carrier state and can I move away from it? Are there issues there? So excellent explanation of liver flukes there any other comments on flukes?

[B]

No, the one thing is, remember this, this original conversation came from South Africa and I don't know, I don't know anything about the liver flukes in South Africa. I don't know the intermediate hosts. I don't know those things. So again, this is a great place to. The local knowledge is really critical.

[A]

Excellent. Well, you guys did a great job discussing all those things from malpresentation to cattle vaccines to liver flukes. The thing you did not address on malpresentation is backwards calves. And you remember when Johnny was out there and the veterinarian was pulling the calf? Did I ever tell you that story? No. No, I don't think he was out there. And the veterinarian was pulling a backwards calf. Two legs were out and the tail. And Johnny said, well, how did that calf get in there? And the veterinarian was a little bit uncomfortable and thought maybe his parents should explain it to him. So he said, well, when a bull breeds a cow, she gets pregnant, then they have a baby. And Johnny said, no, I just meant how fast do you think he was going when he hit? So I had to close with that because you guys made me think of it earlier. So if you have any we appreciate your listener questions, and if you have any questions for us, you can send them to us at bcisu Edu.