Keeping Your Herd STD Free
Avoid a reproductive wreck by keeping costly diseases at bay.
April is Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Awareness month, and cattle should not be left out of the conversation. Trichomoniasis, or trich, is a costly STD that can quickly spread during breeding season, reducing your calf crop by more than 50%.
There is currently no approved treatment for trich, and with such a volatile beef market, it’s a disease beef producers can’t afford to ignore. The reasons behind the harsh impact trich has on beef herds is threefold.
- 1. There is a reduced calf crop of up to 50% due to early embryonic loss or abortion.1
- 2. Lighter weaning weights result from delayed conception.
- 3. Infected cattle must be culled and replaced, thereby losing the herd’s genetic improvement.
Knowing the trich status of the bull battery is essential in trich-prone areas. Before bull turnout, ask the all-important question: Has trich been introduced into the herd? According to Boehringer Ingelheim senior professional services veterinarian John Davidson, disease surveillance is the best method to detect the presence of the venereal pathogen in the herd. Ideally, trich tests should be performed during the bull breeding soundness examination before turnout and also after breeding is complete.
Neighboring herds can also be a source of spreading the disease, especially in herds that utilize open-range grazing.
“Stay in touch with neighbors to learn if trich has been identified or tested for in their herds. In the same way, be a good neighbor yourself and talk to your local veterinarian about testing your herd for trich very soon,” Davidson recommends.
To know if your herd is at a higher risk level, visit www.trichregs.com, which indicates which states are commonly affected by trich, as well as your state’s animal health agency. Ranchers with little to no understanding of trich are 3.3 times more likely to have an infected bull.2 Davidson strongly suggests producers visit www.trichconsult.org to increase their knowledge on the disease.
While there is no approved treatment for trich, there is currently one vaccine — TrichGuard® — available that has been proven to reduce the shedding of T. foetus, the disease-causing organism. A 1992 study compared pregnancy and calving rates between beef heifers vaccinated with TrichGuard and control heifers after heifers were exposed to T. foetus-infected bulls and intravaginally inoculated with 10 million T. foetus organisms. Vaccinated heifers delivered twice the number of calves — 61% vs. 31% — compared to nonvaccinated control heifers.3
Reproductive health of the herd shouldn’t be an avoided conversation, and trich should be managed the other 11 months of the year, too. Take control today and put management practices in place to avoid a trich wreck.
Editor’s Note: This article is provided by Boehringer Ingelheim.
Footnotes:
- 1Rae DO. Impact of Trichomoniasis on the cow-calf producer’s profitability. J Am Vet Med A, 1989;194:6
- 2Rae DO. Crews JE. Greiner EC. Donovan GA. Epidemiology of Tritrichomonas foetus in beef bull populations. Theriogenology, 2004;61:605—618
- 3Kvasnicka WG, et al. Clinical evaluation of the efficacy of inoculation cattle with a vaccine containing Tritrichomonas foetus. Am J Vet Res, 1992;53:11
