Grass is coming!

Good to see the west from a vehicle, not looking out a plane window. Calves look good across MT, WY and NE. Green grass is coming and farmers were busy in western NE planting. The wind was drying things out pretty quickly.

As I saw gas prices rise from town to town, I am reminded that we need to always keep planning to stay profitable even in tough times. I don’t think the challenges of today are going away quickly, but we have had tough times before.

We need to look closely at our operations and ask questions as to where we can improve. Are we having health problems? Now is not the time to lose production on sickness. I often ask the question…Can we afford not to know? At some meetings I have given on BVD control, producers have said that they thought they might have a problem, but they really did not want to know. I think we need to get past that kind of attitude. As it relates to BVD, if you have it, it is costing you money and you can not afford to lose dollars on a disease that has many cost-effective tools to eliminate it from herds. Vaccination is important, but it is not 100%. PI testing is a great way to see if you have a BVD problem. The PI animal is the reservoir for the disease and usually he does not look any different than his herd mates. That is why it is critical to look for him.  If we test and don’t find one…that is good news!! Now tell others that you are negative. That is called marketing.

Time to turn in from a day on the western road. Good country, good people (had a rancher ask if I needed help when I was changing a tire) and a lot of cows with calves at side.

Doesn’t get any better than that!

Management Over Medicine in Cattle

I want to welcome you. My career as a veterinarian has been primarily in working with cowcalf and feedlot operations across the U.S. I have a passion for helping the cattle industry make improvements in a constantly changing environment.  As an industry we need to continue to look for new ways to reduce sickness in cattle. I believe we have several tools to assist producers in keeping cattle healthy and making them more profitable.

As I travel the country doing producer and vet meetings I plan to visit about what I see and my thoughts for ways to make progress. We have an amazing industry with producers who are willing to change and make progress. There will always be people that want to hang on to what they have always done, but I think we are seeing times where that may make it difficult to stay competitive.

We have a challenge in that most people do not come from an agricultural background any more. I was fortunate in being raised on a cattle and row crop farm in Indiana. The people I visit with on airplanes get most if not all their info from media sources that really don’t know anything about what we actually do. I think the attached video shows just that…

Looking forward to visit…have a great day.