Bovine Respiratory Disease is a concern that cattle producers have to deal with to ensure the health of their herds. We caught up with Dr. Che Trejo with Merck Animal Health and NCBA’s CattleCon to learn more. Dr. Trejo said, “It continues to be the biggest disease that cattlemen struggle with and has been that way for as long as I’ve been alive, but we have technologies that are good for it like modified live vaccines help prepare those calves for the transition, but primarily, you know, weaning calves on the ranch is still the biggest thing that producers can do to better improve the chances that calf doesn’t experience BRD in the feed yard.”
Trejo continued, “So in the vaccine space, Merck has both an injectable line or parental line and that’s a Vista and so there’s a straight five-way called Vista 5 and then there’s the combination that has the five-way virals and the Mannheimia Pastorella and that’s Vista once. We then transition into the intranasal lines and they’ve had Nasalgen IP forever. Now it just primarily covers IBR and PI3, but the later intranasal vaccines on the market are Nasalgen 3 and then Nasalgen 3 PMH and those have become pretty big tools for cattlemen to be able to use in the calf space as you can use those on cows that are non-vaccinated or vaccinated with a killed vaccine and still be safe to use on a calf nursing a pregnant cow.”
When asked where producers could go for more information, Trejo said, “first and foremost, contact your local veterinarian. They’re pretty well versed in all things BRD and then Merck will have representatives throughout the country that they can reach out to to their local Merck representative.”
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.