Drs Stayduhar and Hardesty attend Ohio Dairy Vets Meeting There were updates on HPAI Outbreaks from state veterinarian Dr.Sommers and the owner and veterinarian at the one dairy in Ohio that had an outbreak. There were several talks on monitoring systems including reproduction, health, group monitoring, efficiencies, and automated technologies. Our new OSU Dairy Nutritionist, Dr Kirby Krogstad presented Monitoring Nutrition and The Next Chapter of Rumen Health. We will share what we learned through our newsletters.

Pasteurella and Mannheimia Outbreak These diseases have always been part of the pneumonia challenges that we deal with especially in calves. Most calf programs include Once PMH or Nuplura vaccines and they have been valuable in pneumonia control. These vaccines have been less used in adult cows. Universally, adult cow pneumonia has been hard to treat successfully. One dairy developed a strategy that they treat 3 days in a row with Ceftiofur and sell the non responders a week later. The options are to take the losses or prevent with vaccine. So, what are the losses and what is the cost of prevention. We have to use large herd numbers to be valid. In a 5000 cow dairy we commonly have 16 cases (1.3 /400) of pneumonia a month. Vaccination would cut that in half and maybe last for 6 months. That’s 48 less cases due to vaccination.

Let’s assume a pneumonia case in an adult cow makes that cow worth $1000 less than her unaffected herd mates. It is probably closer to $2000 so a minimum savings is $48,000 over the course of vaccination. The vaccine costs $3 a dose so there is an outlay of $15,000 and a 3 pound milk drop for 3 days, which is another $9000. So we're looking at 2 for 1. We don’t always jump on 2/1, but a recent case, would make this activity look more like life insurance. You hope you don’t need it, but if you do, it’s a life saver. Pun intended.

The following is shared with permission of the herd owner hoping to help others. | got the call on Tuesday evening that something was wrong with the herd. One had just died, one died yesterday, and one died three days ago. They are down in milk and rumenations dropped. | immediately assumed we were dealing with an outbreak of Bibestenia trehalosi. This is a variant of pasteurella that is rapidly deadly to several cows at once. On necropsy, the lungs are significantly consolidated or “exploded.” | grabbed the pasteurella vaccine that we had, several bottles of ceftiofur, and Dr. Katie and | headed to the farm.

Dr. Katie did the necropsy while | walked the herd with the owner administering vaccine to every cow and Ceftiofur to each cow that showed respiratory signs or a significant drop in rumenations. We touched base every day and by the end of the 2 week outbreak 7% of the herd died and over 1/3 were treated. This was mostly guided by the drops in rumenations or rapid breathing. Dry cows were not affected and cows less than 100 DIM and heifers showed few signs. Two weeks later it seemed to pass through the calves with a few deaths, but pretty good response to treatment. They had all received Nasalgen 3 PMH at birth.

The lab was slow with the process due to flu testing as a priority prior to other testing and a national holiday. | was surprised that the results weren't trehalosi but rather pasteurella multocida and manheimia hemolytica. Prevention and treatment is the same, but illustrates why we do diagnostics. Knowing that this happened, we may reconsider vaccinating for a break even disease. Dr Emily currently has another herd suspicious of the same.