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Cattle Chat
Newborn Fly Control, Bovine Science, Castration Research
00:24:26
Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat! In this week’s episode of Cattle Chat, we start by answering a listener question pertaining to newborn calves with flies. Next, the crew go over BCI’s other podcast Bovine Science.
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to BCI Cattle Chat. I'm Brad White. Happy to have you with us today and happy to have our crew here. Morning, Bob.
- [00:10]
B
Good morning, guys.
- [00:11]
C
Philip Good morning, everybody.
- [00:13]
A
Dustin Good morning. Scott.
- [00:15]
D
Hello.
- [00:16]
A
So we've got a full room because we've got lots of topics to discuss. We've got a listener question relative to newborns and flies, which is really relevant for fall calving herds. We're also going to talk a little bit about castration and subsequent performance and some of those price discounts based on a new article that came out. And we'll touch on our other podcast, Bovine Science with bci, because there's been a couple topics there that I wanted to bring up here that we could discuss as a group a little bit. If you have listener questions that you'd like to send us, you can send those to bcisu, edu or you can reach out to us on social media. But guys, before we get into our main topics today, I wanted to ask you what we with the upcoming football season. I want to know your ideal once in a lifetime, either game or stadium or time of year, you'd like to go, like kind of the. I'd like to go see the packers play at Lambeau in December when it's really cold and you can't pick one of our home teams here. Where do you, where do you want to go? Bob? It could be college or pro.
- [01:21]
B
Yeah. You know, so I like what you said. I'd like to do, you know, one of the kind of the classic stadiums. So Chicago still has Soldier Field. I don't know how much longer they'll.
- [01:29]
A
Oh, you're going to go.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I want to go up there and it'd be great to see like, the packers and the Bears play, you know, something classic. Just kind of go back to the old roots.
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A
Maybe a snow game.
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B
And a snow game would be perfect.
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A
Awesome. Philip.
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C
I don't know. I'm, I might go to Lambeau Field. As long as I've got a suite that's enclosed.
- [01:50]
B
Cheese head.
- [01:52]
C
I think some college, I'm trying to think college games, you know, some of the big rivalry games would, would be good to go to Texas A M and, and TU or I'm trying to think in the Southeast Conference, Alabama and LSU or some of those, those atmospheres would be really fun.
- [02:12]
A
Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma, Texas, Red river rivalry. Scott, you're going college. I, I'm going to make a bet you're going college.
- [02:20]
D
I am going college. Yeah. And I, I grew up going to Husker games. And so I always thought a fascinating stat was Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, when it's full on game days, the third biggest city in the state. So I always found that cool. But staying at Nebraska, nobody there, I would still want to catch a college game. I want to see Michigan, Ohio State at Michigan. I think that stadium packed full with a rivalry game like that would be pretty cool to see.
- [02:44]
A
And a huge state.
- [02:45]
D
Yeah, I don't care about either team. And frankly, it would be cool if they both lost, but. But I'd still go watch the game.
- [02:51]
E
Looks like we're losing listeners in Ohio and Michigan now, so for me it's college as well. I want to go to sec. I just want the. And it's not necessarily the game. I do want to go see the game, but I want to see the whole atmosphere. I want to go with the tailgating and just see, you know, whether it's lsu, Alabama, Tennessee, I think would be really cool. Georgia, old Miss Florida, somewhere in the sec. And I think I want the whole experience, not just the game.
- [03:17]
A
And you're talking 100 plus thousand in with.
- [03:20]
E
Yep. And I want to start Thursday night and just go like, you know, the.
- [03:24]
A
Whole experience, you know, another one, be.
- [03:26]
B
Like the Army Navy game again, going back to the. The historic rivalries and things like that. I think those would be fun.
- [03:33]
A
You guys just need to come up with a plan. We need to go to.
- [03:36]
B
Let's go. Go to road trip, guys.
- [03:37]
A
Yeah. And I just am picturing Philip in the cheese head. So that's going to. That's going to go a long way.
- [03:43]
D
Maybe catch K State in. In Ireland.
- [03:45]
A
Yeah, we could have done that. Let's shift back to cattle. And we had a listener question, and his question specifically was, what can I do for fly control and deworming on newborn calves? Because he's had a few calves that, once they're born, seem to be covered with flies very soon after birth. And I'm going to start with the deworming part first. First, because I think that's pretty straightforward. And then we'll address the flies. So, Bob, on deworming on newborns, is there a place for it? Do I need to worry about internal parasites on these calves when they hit the ground?
- [04:19]
B
Well, they will pick up parasites pretty soon. The earliest that we've really looked at is, is when they're a little bit. A little bit older, you know, a month to three months of age. So we're aiming for that two month of age, but you get some on each side and we do see a benefit deworming at that age? It's a little bit. And again, you got to think about the time of year when I say that we're talking about calves that were born in the spring. So we're talking about, you know, June 1st and, and you. So you think about the environmental stress that the parasites are undergoing and the forage and stuff. It makes a lot of sense for a springboard calf. You can get some benefits from deworming them at a relatively young age. Not necessarily birth, but remember that parasite.
- [04:58]
A
Has a life cycle. So if even if they pick up eggs, it's a while before they're going to be ready to need to be dewormed.
- [05:05]
B
Right.
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A
And they have to have a burden.
- [05:07]
B
So deworming typically don't deworm at birth and that I'm stretching to figure that out. The thing you need to think about though is we're talking about summertime here. And so depending on again, are we talking about the southeast part of the United States wherein this is prime parasite time of year, or are we talking about western Kansas when the parasite looks pretty darn low based on sunshine and heat and those kinds of things. So I think it's very geographically dependent. But I'm still not talking about the day of birth. I'm talking about in a couple of months.
- [05:36]
A
Okay, so let's move to the other part of his question, which is on fly control. And Scott, I'm going to turn to you first and ask specifically, do I have concerns with giving those products to newborns? So a lot of times we're using something that would control flies, either an ear tag or a pour on which has chemicals in it to attack the flies. But am I concerned about that safety for newborns?
- [05:58]
D
You sure could be. So if you're mixing products to apply to a 1400 pound cow and you've got a 80 pound newborn calf, then you got to be pretty careful how you dose that animal because it's all going to be based on body weight.
- [06:09]
A
And it's easy to get a 10x or a 20x dose. Right. Sometimes a little overdose may not be as big, but a 10 or 20x is huge.
- [06:16]
D
Right. And I the safety margin between that for the variable products, I'm sure is different. And I don't have them all memorized, but it's something that you would need to read the label pretty close and see if there's a, a dose per pound or dose per hundred pound on there and try to observe that as best you can.
- [06:31]
A
Okay. And then Would you deworm those newborn calves?
- [06:35]
B
So fly control, you mean?
- [06:37]
A
Yeah, fly control.
- [06:38]
B
Fly control, yeah, I probably would if the burden was pretty good now. And that's one of the frustrating things about calves born this time of the year. So our, you know, summer calves or kind of early fall calves towards this part of the year, flies will really get on those young calves and they can be a problem. So I think two things. One is maybe address fly control in your cows, because that's where it's coming from, is your adult cows. And so make sure that you've done a good job with fly control on the cows. And I would at least have in my toolbox the potential to, to do some fly control, either tags or a pour on on these young calves within the first few days of life, if necessary. I'd rather kind of wait even just a few weeks. But the fly burden can in certain situations be quite high. And you need to address that in these baby cats.
- [07:28]
D
And you'll see it seems like they really congregate around the face, around the navel area too, which are, you know, areas that are pretty sensitive, you know, from a disease transmission perspective. But they've got topical sprays that wouldn't be a big risk for like a systemic toxicity that, you know, you could maybe get away with every other day or, you know, every week. Administration, something like that may be more appropriate than a actual labeled poron product. And the tag thing, I think I bet there is a body weight limit on a lot of the labels for the ear tags, but I guess putting a tag in a newborn calf, if you're already going to tag them, there's not a lot of just physical space there. So it may be just even a, an aesthetic consideration too, to think about.
- [08:09]
A
And it's challenging to calibrate that dose because those tags are one dose per tag, right? Yeah, the tag per animal, and you're either putting one or two right, and.
- [08:18]
D
That'S the, the limit that you can get to.
- [08:20]
A
So I think when we talk about those flies and you mentioned Bob coming from the cows, and a lot of times we think of we may need to distinguish face flies from horn flies. Face flies will look like a house fly. Horn flies are smaller, typically on the thorax or the chest of the, of the animal. And when you talk and both of them can be associated with our cow herd, and we may want to maintain that. We also need to think about our calving areas because those face flies will spend a lot of time just in the area. So how does that Play into this discussion.
- [08:50]
B
Yeah, that there, those are the two main flies we talk about and they're pretty darn different as far as. So the horn fly spends basically its entire life on an animal. The, the eggs are laid in manure paths and so some of our feed through fly control helps with stable flies and, and horn flies and so sanitation, spreading those calves out. Good adult fly control works pretty well. Face flies are really frustrating because they, they tend to spend most of their time away from the animal, which makes them a little bit, they just don't get the same dose of insecticide when they actually spend just such a small amount of time on the animal. So a lot of times what we're really talking about with face flies is trying to do something that repels them and some of the same insecticides that could kill them also repel them. I don't know why. I guess, I mean they don't smell good or something. The flies don't like them. And that becomes the goal is not so much to kill them, but it's to get them off. But it, you can't attack it the same way or it's not as successful just because they're, they're resting and spending their time off the animal a vast majority of the time.
- [09:58]
A
So great answers guys. And, and sounds like in summary, might want to treat those calves, be sure it's dose appropriate for that small weight, but also look at the rest of the herd in the environment to get a full fly control plan. I'd like to talk a little bit and kind of what spurred this. You guys have had some recent topics on our BS with BCI or Bovine science with BCI podcast where we. It's more of a one on one format. But I wanted to discuss a couple of those topics because Scott, you had talked about a guide for what samples to collect. If we're worried about a toxicology, maybe give us just a brief overview of what we talked about there.
- [10:35]
D
Yeah, so I guess that that segment is usually we're presenting cases that we've experienced and kind of the pros and cons of the ways that they were handled in the field. And then as part of that the most recent one we did, we put together a sampling guide. So if you have a toxic exposure in a group of animals, kind of the samples you need to select how those need to be stored and transported and the different ways that we can, you know, analyze them, the different tests we can do to help sort out whatever it is that we're trying to look for. So it's, we've even got, it's posted on the website yet it can be downloaded in a word file kept in a truck somewhere. It really just helps you select the samples that we need to do our job on this end.
- [11:12]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And it's a nice concise summary of what you would have to do. And as you mentioned, a lot of times you do cases which, Bob, you've done some cases on repro lately and I want to ask you, where do you get those cases?
- [11:26]
B
Well, it's actually pretty easy. We get calls a lot of times and because they're kind of referrals, a veterinarian oftentimes will call us for a second opinion on a case that's kind of interesting or challenging or a little bit different presentation. And so those usually become pretty interesting to work up. And you know, when we work up a reproduction case, basically we're saying the cows didn't breed up as well as we would like. And so we, we start looking at the data because usually what you'll find is it's not an across the board problem. There's a subgroup, it's a certain age of cows, it's a certain pasture, it's some subgroup that is the bulk of the problem. And that's the first part of the investigation is just figuring out, well, who didn't get pregnant. And then another aspect or question we often ask is when didn't they get pregnant? Because in a, in a confined breeding season, you know, so we talk about a 60 day breeding season, but it could be 70, 80, 90 days during that time frame. Again, it's, it wouldn't be typical for there to be reproductive problems throughout that entire breeding season. So again, we go back and we'd really try to structure it so that we can figure out who didn't get pregnant and when didn't they get pregnant. And that then usually what starts out as being kind of confusing and kind of hard to put your hands on. Once you've identified who and when cows didn't get pregnant, a lot of times the answer becomes really obvious or at least it guides the rest of the investigation, whether it's getting diagnostic samples or doing something else. It really kind of helps simplify it, but it's, it's kind of getting into that habit of really asking the questions in the right order.
- [13:04]
A
Well, and I like the case driven. So all those are based on real cases. Worth it, worth a list. And just to find out kind of how the, everyone handled it, both the veterinarian and the producer, as you go through. Philip, you've also done some things where what you've done is kind of gone to the literature. There's always new, especially nutrition. And on diving into diets, you go into some of those specific topics. When you pick an article, you have multiple articles come across your desk all the time. How do you decide which ones are of most interest that you want to talk about?
- [13:37]
C
Well, I just. I try to find some things that are usually applicable, like immediately applicable or something that's new and novel and that might be. Sometimes that's related to cow nutrition, sometimes it's to feedlot nutrition. And so just. Just trying to find things that I think would be useful for people out in the field to know about.
- [14:04]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is a good summary of bovine science where we have a chance. We don't get as much of a chance here with all of us to dive as deep into some of these topics. And the goal of bovine science is we get to go a little bit deeper. And I like that Scott's has creepy music at the start, so we get to listen to that at the start of Scott's podcast. Dustin.
- [14:27]
E
And so if some of our listeners want to go find these episodes, where would they go?
- [14:31]
A
Yeah, you can go to either the BCI website or you can go to wherever you get podcasts and just search bovine science with bci with the apt abbreviation BS with bci, because that happens a little bit as well. So we get a little bit of chance to talk. Not on yours, Bob.
- [14:47]
B
Of course not.
- [14:48]
A
So, speaking of speaking of articles, I've got one I want to share with you guys that just came out, and this was an interesting article. Wanted to get your perspectives. It was in Applied Animal Science 2025, the effects of beef health status during receiving on sub and on subsequent performance during stocker and finishing phase. A mouthful of a title. Beck et al on this paper, and really they focused on aggregating several studies together that had previously been done, put some stats on it, and evaluated castration and subsequent performance. And what they found were bulls compared to steers were 1.16 times more likely to have chronic morbidity and 2.3 times more likely to have BRD or bovine respiratory mortality compared to steers. They had about 1900 animals from these different studies, which. Which leads me to a question. Certainly there's more morbidity, there's some performance differences, but, Dustin, I wanted to ask you, do we see price differences in these cattle when we're. When someone is selling or buying bulls versus steers.
- [16:01]
E
Yep. So there's been a couple studies, one out of Kentucky that looked at just 550 pound steers, bulls from 2010 to 2021. And, and the discount was a little over 3% in that study. More recent study out of Oklahoma State looking at 2020-2022, they found the discounts, depending on weight of the, of the bull, steers range anywhere from 6% at a 375 pound animal to about 8% at a, at a 875 pound animal. So there. So those studies, a little different time frames and you range anywhere from 3 to about 8% depending on the weight.
- [16:42]
A
Which is interesting because in this study they said for the BRD consequences, morbidity and mortality, that there should have been a two and a half percent discount, which is close to what you said on your bottom end. However, when you factor in BRD and performance differences of castrated bulls versus steers, they thought the bulls should be sold at a 15% discount relative to the steers.
- [17:11]
B
And a 15% discount would be pretty, pretty sizable. But, but there's some truth to that because if, if you've ever castrated bulls and then monitored their weight gain over the next few weeks, they, they go backwards for a while and it takes a while to really come back and regain what their steer mates would have been in this. So, so there's definitely a performance hit that's in addition to, well, they're at greater risk for respiratory disease. So yes, you have treatment cost, but respiratory disease has a performance decline as well. And so, well, and you get performance.
- [17:46]
A
Decrease on the castrated bulls that even don't get.
- [17:48]
B
Yeah, that's my point. So it's both. So if you castrate bulls at £550, 600, £700, and I agree, it makes sense that the higher the weight, the greater the discount because in my opinion, it. That's where I would see more and more of kind of a depression in performance and a greater risk because those calves were bigger.
- [18:06]
A
Okay, so let's start big picture. And I want to ask you guys, from an industry perspective, we talk a lot about how can we better prevent disease. And in this scenario, if we're castrating bulls at or about weaning. Yes, there's a price discount, as Dustin mentioned, and there's a performance BRD risk. From an industry standpoint, what could we do to mitigate that?
- [18:29]
D
I think the first answer is castrate bulls earlier. I mean, it's do it at two months of age. And I think that there's quite a bit of work that would support that you mitigate. You know, you don't have the weight driving the discounts that you would see. And you should have, in theory, lower morbidity associated with that. And then you would have, as a cow calf guy, you'd have more time to, you know, if you do get a reduction in performance post castration, you would retain those animals longer and potentially have more time to catch those up with their steer mates. Well, they would all be steers, I guess, at some point, but yeah, so.
- [19:01]
A
If we did them at birth or a couple months of age, they've got more time to recovery. And I don't get that small but potentially meaningful discount of 3% when, when I go to sell them. Okay, so let's say that I, I agree with that long term. What about in the short term? And Bob, I want you to approach this from the standpoint of the buyer of the animals. How would you use this information if you were buying bulls and steers?
- [19:30]
B
Well, my, my first preference would be for steers that had been steered, you know, at a young age, 2 months of age or younger. That'd be my, my priority to buy. And I'm not going to speak for all buyers, but I would almost prefer a bull that then I would bring into my system, castrate him and manage them through my system versus buying a recently castrated calf from a, from a seller. And so those.
- [19:58]
A
Which may be harder to distinguish it.
- [20:00]
B
Yes. Well, yeah, it depends on how recently. So there's, there's several ways to look. So as a buyer, my preference is for that steer versus a bull. I'm going to give you a discount for the bull. And it just makes my life easier as far as respiratory disease risk, kind of predicting performance and those types of things. So.
- [20:20]
C
Yeah.
- [20:21]
B
And now the question that, another back way of asking the question that you ask was, okay, I didn't castrate them at two months of age or younger. They're £500 or £550 and pounds and I want to sell them. Do I castrate them now? Do I castrate them and retain ownership and hold them, you know, for several months? Do I castrate them and then take them to the market as recently castrated? Those are, it's kind of like you've missed your ideal. So now I don't have ideal. What's the best of my options? To be honest, I don't know. And it depends. I almost would just leave them as bulls and let the next guy. Yes, I'm Going to take a discount but let them go into the system kind of has a known commodity.
- [21:07]
C
Yeah, I kind of agree with you because so if my discount is about 3% or so just by selling a bull and it should be almost 15% based on their calculation with the before, I'm going to be the one who's going to take that, that extra hit if I castrate them and keep them around because it's going to take them, they're going to lose weight for several weeks. It's going to take them a month before they actually really start to gain weight again. And then it's going to take them probably, you know, another month or so before they get to. Back to where they are. So, so. But by this time I've lost weight. It's going to take me, I'm going to say two months to, for them to regain weight and get back to where they. They kind of were. And at that whole, during that whole time, I'm going through the fall of the year and the price of feeder calves is sliding down as we, as we go through the increase of supply in October, November, December. And so by the time I'm ready to sell them, I'm at the bottom of the, the fall market. And so there's a big hit there when it comes to, to that scenario.
- [22:14]
A
And it's one of the real, what you guys described is one of the real challenges with the segmented industry. And you guys both put yourself in the shoes of, well, I, I might do better, but the next guy's going to straw. And that becomes a real problem from an industry standpoint. So, Dustin and Scott, I'll, I'll ask you guys, same position. You're on the cow calf side and you've got bulls and we're close to weaning. What are your thoughts on how to handle those?
- [22:40]
D
I think I'm in the same boat. I think I leave them as bulls and let them go in the system. And the, the end buyer knows what they're dealing with and they, they manage it however they need to.
- [22:50]
A
And then ideally for next year, cash.
- [22:51]
D
Transferred them early and you don't recognize the discount when you sell. And you should mitigate most of the issues that at least they've identified here.
- [22:58]
A
Dustin?
- [22:59]
E
Yeah, I'd probably agree with what everybody said, except if I've got several months that I know before I'm gonna get rid of them and I've got the time and, you know, maybe the grass is there. If I've got.
- [23:11]
B
You got a low cost to gain.
- [23:13]
E
Right. And so I guess it just, it depends on the situation.
- [23:16]
A
There's a, there's a value add opportunity, right, by rem, A value add by subtraction of two pieces.
- [23:22]
E
Yeah, exactly. Especially this, I mean this year, right. When we prices are a little higher. And so it just depends, I guess on everything that's going on, on my operation.
- [23:32]
C
If, if I'm playing to background them anyway, then yes, castrate them and don't. Don't background them for.
- [23:40]
B
Keep them.
- [23:41]
C
Yeah, don't keep them as bulls for another three months or whatever and then try to sell them.
- [23:44]
A
Yeah. And good point of bringing in the timing because when we say background, that's not 30 days. I probably won't have time to make it up in that time period. But if I'm keeping them for three months, then yes, I'll be able to make that back up. And the sooner the better. Right. If I'm going to make that decision, don't. That's a decision not to put off for weeks or months because it's only going to get harder and the impacts are only going to get worse. So the sooner we can castrate those calves, the better. Appreciate you guys input on, on these topics today and if you have other topics you'd like us to discuss, you can send us an email. It'd pcisu Eduardo.