Katrina Garneau stands in the feedlot at the Livestock and Forage Centre for Excellence field day, waiting for attendees to crowd around. She is very familiar with feedlots, having spent a few years travelling from one feedlot to another, working with pen riders.
This is not Garneau’s first time presenting at the centre’s field day, but it is her first time with her master’s completed. She successfully defended her thesis in August 2024, and the findings of her research, which focuses on bovine respiratory disease (BRD) in feedlots and the role of pen riders, are publicly available.
She says this research will be beneficial not just for the industry, but for the riders themselves.
Read Also
Effect of wildfire smoke on respiratory health in beef cattle
Of all domesticated species, cattle have the smallest relative lung capacity, making them particularly vulnerable to wildfire smoke.
“The whole diagnosis really heavily relies on these pen riders. So we kind of wanted to figure out what it is they’re looking for and what makes a good pen rider.”
BRD
Garneau’s study looked at the role of pen riders in the detection of BRD and whether technology can be improved.
Bovine respiratory disease is a common disease in feedlots. It is also known as shipping fever. It can be caused by a variety of factors, including complex interactions between environmental factors, host factors and pathogens. The symptoms of BRD are a fever that is over 40 C, difficulty breathing, poor appetite, nasal discharge, etc.
Morbidity rates are around 35 to 50 per cent, and fatality is five to 10 per cent, but these rates depend on the risk factors present. Feeder calves with BRD are most likely to die within 45 days after they arrive at the feedlot.
“BRD, of course, is one of the main diseases that affects feedlots every year. There’s so many variables depending on what location you’re at geographically, drought — everything makes an impact for these producers,” Garneau says.
Currently, BRD is spotted in feedlots by pen riders who are looking for the clinical symptoms. Garneau’s research, which was under Diego Moya at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, examined whether there is a better option for detecting BRD cases.
“Having an inappropriate prognosis and treatment of sick cattle results in losses due to mortality, misuse of antimicrobials and spread of disease,” she says. “So we want to avoid all that.”
Research
To conduct this research, Garneau went to five different feedlots across Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2021 and 2022, where she shadowed pen riders as they worked. She worked with 12 different pen riders.
When riders pulled a sick animal from a bunk, Garneau asked them followup questions, such as what specific symptoms they saw that caused them to pull the animal.
When the riders started their treatment, Garneau would collect data, such as temperature and blood samples.
She also used a Whisper device to get a lung auscultation score. The Whisper is a Bluetooth stethoscope paddle connected to a computer. The handler presses the button, and it starts to read the noises of the animal’s lungs. Then, it generates an image showing the different volumes and frequencies of the noises. It creates a severity score with one being normal and five being chronic.
For the blood samples, she used a hand lactate metre.
However, she found that there were issues with the technology that affected the results. For example, sometimes the Whisper and the lactate measure would disagree on if an animal was sick or not.
“Although we were adding more tools and trying to increase that accuracy… It didn’t really help us. It started to confuse some of our results,” Garneau says.
After collecting all this data, Garneau got the health records from all the cattle they pulled. They wanted to see if the cattle needed more treatment, and if they were pulled or treated too late.
They collected 146 health records from 163 sick animals. This was less than Garneau wanted — going into this research, she aimed to have records from 500 animals. However, the lower number of records means they had healthy cattle while conducting this study.
“It was kind of variable there, and we wanted to have more sound statistics,” she said. “So, only having 146 actual health records isn’t great for statistics. So, we kind of had some roadblocks there. But it was really interesting to start seeing the correlation of these clinical signs.”
There was another aspect of this study, which consisted of a survey of approximately 200 pen riders, which filled in any gaps from the field work. This was to determine what good pen riders were doing differently.
In the survey, the researchers sent a GoPro video of cattle being pulled to different pen riders of different demographics and experience levels and employing different practices (horses, quad, etc.). The animals in the video had subtle signs of disease, and the researchers asked the pen riders which cattle they would pull and why.
With both the field trials and the survey, the most common clinical signs of BRD became apparent.
Results
Nose secretions were highly associated with BRD. The signs most often seen in animals that died were flat tail, which is when the tail-head of the animal sits lower than the hip bone, and mouth secretions. Calves with chronic cases showed signs of nose secretions and abnormal respiration. According to a Beef Cattle Research Council article about this research, sunken eyes were negatively associated with rectal temperatures that were over 40 C, “suggesting that this clinical sign should be regarded as less important among pen riders when pulling calves with BRD.”
The survey showed pen riders were mostly in agreement about the prominent clinical signs for BRD. The level of experience a pen rider has did not matter — what was more important was what they valued. For example, pen riders who considered body posture and head carriage as critically important were more accurate than riders who gave more value to mouth and nose discharge.
Following this research, Garneau says there is a clear result — pen riders are necessary and aren’t going anywhere.
“Pen riders will remain an essential part of our industry, whether it’s in addition to technology or not. They kind of have that intuition that we’re still trying to figure out. It does give us a little insight to see what they are looking for.”
There is, however, an opportunity for pen riders to work with the kind of technology Garneau implemented while working on this study.
But she says there are other, simpler things that can help pen riders do their job, such as heated jackets or gloves.
“We have to start at the beginning, and that’s as simple as heated jackets,” she says.
“These pen riders need to be treated like gold while they’re on your production site, your operation, because … they’re the ones going out every day. And they are so dedicated to these animals, the least we can do is keep them warm.”
Garneau sees opportunities with precision technology, but only if it is alongside pen riders. For example, in cold weather, she found that sometimes her readings could be off. That would be a situation when it would be necessary to have a skilled pen rider working with the technology.
“They might drop the tools that day, because they’re like, ‘Well, the tools aren’t working. And I know that I have a good intuition, it’s not going to work today, but on a regular day, it could work really well.’ So I think we have a lot of work to do with technology.”
But when technology fails, pen riders are still out there amongst the cattle, searching for symptoms and pulling sick animals despite the weather or time of year.
However, the work can be made easier by learning how technology can work alongside the pen riders.
“I think the more we add on technology into the industry with the pen riders, and learn from the pen riders and tweak it, eventually I think it’ll be a good commensal relationship,” she says.
The role pen riders play in diagnosing cattle and the function of a feedlot should not be downplayed, and Garneau feels passionate about ensuring pen riders are treated with the value they deserve.
While part of this might be with heated coats or gloves to help against the elements, she also believes more can be done, such as offering pen riders benefits and better wages.
This would not only guarantee better work from the riders but would help prevent turnover.
“They need the tools to succeed. You’re kind of starting at the source. If you’re providing all these materials and tools for the people who are actually doing the job, the job’s going to get done better and more effectively, and you’re going to have people wanting to return.”
Having good pen riders is an asset, because they can be hard to come by, and the work they do is not easy.
“I would say just cherish your pen riders more and make it more interesting to come (to) work,” Garneau says.
“There’s a demand for these people.”
Future
Garneau completed this research and successfully defended her master’s thesis last year. However, even though the work is done, she is still looking to the future. She says there is more that can be researched.
Garneau would like to look into the accuracy of pen riders for confirmed sick animals, since this research only included the animals they were pulling. She would also like to get data from more sick animals to get more structured statistics. She’d also like to create a standard for the identification of clinical signs by confirming BRD cases through post-mortems.
With more tangible results, training for pen riders could be more attainable — something Garneau says is also a problem. Having concrete evidence and training means it would be easier to identify what works and what doesn’t.
“I feel as though we’re at a really good starting point, and I think that if you continue on with identifying those clinical signs and broadening how much knowledge we have on that subject, it’ll get better for everyone,” she says.
“I do see value in this research for the pen riders. And I do get a really great response from the pen riders. They’re so excited to talk to me all the time, and I get so excited to talk to them, because they know so much, and I can learn so much from them.”
