2010 was anything but a banner year for forage and hay crops. Incessant rain, early frost and delayed harvesting reduced the quality of most legume stands and the quality of cereals destined for winter forage. Volunteer crops mixed with weeds like kochia are being bailed on land that went unseeded, adding to the inventory of […] Read more
Potential Of Nitrate Toxicity High
Toxic Dumps In Back Yards
Old garbage dumps litter the Prairies. Through the generations many things were dumped and forgotten by Prairie residents. Unfortunately, some of those things included old batteries, containers of used oil from the days of lead-based gas additives, lead-based paint and elemental lead. Few appreciate lead’s tenacity as an environmental contaminate. A used car battery buried […] Read more
Agriculture And Antimicrobial Resistance: Maybe? Maybe Not?
The origin and cause of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues unabated with no end in sight. The urgency of finding answers cannot be overstated and finding answers to a problem as perplexing and complicated as AMR is elusive. Agriculture is just beginning to recognize the critical role disease surveillance plays along with the ability to measure […] Read more
Still Anxious About Brucellosis?
The announcement on May 26 by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) that it had launched a brucellosis investigation on two farms in southern British Columbia nettled an industry already besieged by challenges. Three beef cows from adjacent ranches in the Osoyoos area were classified as “reactors” on brucellosis tests conducted during routine slaughter surveillance […] Read more
Salmonellosis
Salmonella infections are a serious cause of diarrhea in young calves. Salmonella can cause disease in cattle at all ages and are a health threat to humans and other species of animals that come into contact with cows or calves shedding organisms. Transmission occurs primarily through fecal contamination and can include everyday calving-season tools like […] Read more
It could save your life
Q fever, a disease transmitted from animals to humans, is caused by Coxiella burnetii (C. burnetii), an organism belonging to a family of infectious agents known as rickettsia. While often disregarded as being a potential pathogen in the realm of human and veterinary medicine, C. burnetii is distributed globally and a signifi-cant cause of disease […] Read more
Brsv: Bovine Respiratory Syncytial Virus
Bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) was identified as a cause of respiratory disease in the 1970s. In the four decades since, BRSV became a problem in cattle herds worldwide. In the UK it is the most important primary viral cause of respiratory disease in young calves affecting approximately 1.9 million calves at a cost of […] Read more
Vultures in the calving shed, the threat of zoonoses
Not just calves get sick at calving time. All farm animals naturally carry a number of bacteria, viruses and protozoa that also affect humans. These diseases are known as zoonoses and people working with animals are at risk of acquiring them. At no time of the year is contact between humans and cattle closer than […] Read more
The common sense part of calf scour prevention
Biosecurity isn’t about beating bugs — that’s impossible. Biosecurity is about controlling the line of scrimmage between disease, host and environment. Nowhere is that more important than during calving season when the highly vulnerable newborn is dropped into an inhospitable world. Biosecurity is about managing risk. It’s a thinking game. On-ranch biosecurity is about sticking […] Read more
Canadian Cattlemen Presents: Depth of Field
