ANGUS BEEF BULLETIN EXTRA

June 7, 2022 | Vol. 15 : No. 6

The 8-inch flat paddle, featuring six sensors in a hard plastic shell, is placed on the right side of an animal’s chest to listen for lung and heart sounds. “In a matter of seconds, it gives the user information to decide if that animal needs metaphylaxis, or if it can be withheld,” says Jason Nickell, Merck Animal Health.

Save Antibiotic Use for the Ones That Really Need It

New technology explores ways to predict cattle health risk.

FCMG — The price primer

There are always clues. Management history, genetics, plane of nutrition — they all provide some prediction power. Yet, even with all that context, it can be hard to tell exactly which animals are going to get sick and which ones won’t.

That’s why metaphylaxis, or the process of treating an entire group of cattle with preventative antimicrobials on arrival, has been such an important tool to keep high-risk cattle healthy, says John Richeson, animal scientist at West Texas A&M University.

“We know that even if a group of animals is classified as high-risk, almost never would every single animal become ill with BRD (bovine respiratory disease),” he says.

Some animals need an antimicrobial on arrival, and others in the same pen would remain healthy without it. He and his colleagues are trying to find ways to evaluate individual animals vs. the standard group method, but the research is not without challenges.

“You’re trying to predict health risk. You’re not necessarily trying to diagnose disease,” he explains. “We want to determine whether that animal is likely to become sick four, five, six, seven days down the road.”

Research continues across the industry, but today two commercially available technologies are being used in select feedyards across the United States:

Whisper on Arrival
The 8-inch flat paddle, featuring six sensors in a hard plastic shell, is placed on the right side of an animal’s chest to listen for lung and heart sounds.

“In a matter of seconds, it gives the user information to decide if that animal needs metaphylaxis, or if it can be withheld,” Jason Nickell, Merck Animal Health, says.


Early data show that using Whisper On Arrival reduces antibiotic use by around 50%, with a range of 10% to 70%.

The algorithm uses the biological data in concert with information the feeder has already entered related to animal history and their own tolerance for risk.

Think of it like a stress test in humans, Nickell says. “They put you on a treadmill and determine your risk of a heart attack. They stress you constantly to elicit a response,” he notes.

Cattle entering the feedyard have been tested with some stressors — going through an auction market, traveling long distances, maybe an abrupt weaning or weather. Within seconds of capturing the data, it will give a “treat” or “don’t treat” reading.

“The whole goal of this is to reduce antibiotics, but we don’t want to reduce antibiotics and cause a negative health outcome,” he says.

The objective is to withhold antimicrobials from the right animals.

Early data show that using Whisper® On Arrival reduces antibiotic use by around 50%, with a range of 10% to 70%.

QScout BLD

QScout® BLD is a chuteside blood assay test by Advanced Animal Diagnostics.

QScout BLD

QScout BLD is a chuteside blood assay test by Advanced Animal Diagnostics. It relies on a drop of blood gathered in a “QDraw,” or a slim vial that allows for a quick stick, and then the processor pops the needle off and clicks the top (similar to a ballpoint pen) to insert the blood onto a slide. The machine then takes 30 seconds to analyze it.

“The first responders in the immune system are white blood cells,” says Joy Parr Drach, president of Advanced Animal Diagnostics. “They’re designed to fight infection, so our system is about taking information from those first responders and making better decisions because of it.”

It relies on a drop of blood gathered in a “QDraw,” or a slim vial that allows for a quick stick, and then the processor pops the needle off and clicks the top (similar to a ballpoint pen) to insert the blood onto a slide. The machine then takes 30 seconds to analyze it.

“You get a full white-blood-cell differential, just like what you would get when you go to the doctor for your annual physical, but you don’t have to decode that chuteside because we turned it into a colored light system,” she explains.

Green means no treatment.

“Red means that calf is either fighting an infection right now or we think their immune system isn’t going to respond well to an infection,” Drach says.

Recently they’ve added a third category, where their survivability index will trigger a purple color to flag cattle at the highest risk for death loss. They’ve found those cattle can be up to nine times more likely to die than their cohorts.

“If I know that animal is at a greater risk of dying, can I manage them differently to reduce my loss?” he asks.

Better for everyone
Reducing antibiotic use is a boon to producers in cost savings, and it’s a way to stay ahead of consumer concerns over product usage, Drach says.

Cattlemen worldwide need antibiotics to continue to work, Richeson adds.

“The less antimicrobial pressure that we put on a population, the less antimicrobial resistance, in theory, that we have,” he says. “So, hopefully, it’s another avenue to maintain efficacy of our antimicrobials.”

He looks forward to widespread application of some of these advanced technologies.

“It’s also great for our industry from a sustainability standpoint and efforts to show our consumers that we are trying to find ways to reduce antimicrobial use in beef cattle production.”

To learn more, listen to the upcoming Angus at Work podcast, “To Treat or Not To Treat,” with John Richeson, which will air June 15. You can also read the long-form Angus Beef Bulletin article by the same name.




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