We went to a cattle meeting a few weeks ago, and the BI vet had research showing that the trich vaccine makes a pretty sizable difference in the amount of damage done when a bull becomes infected with trich. Something along the lines of 60% of cows infected vs. 30%. I didn't hear it, but my husband insists he also said vaccinated bulls could actually beat the disease. As a bull buyer, would it make a difference one way or the other if you could buy a vaccinated bull? We are wondering if we should add it to our already very loooong list of bull vaccinations.
Trich Vaccine
- Thread starter Jessica06
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Nesikep
Well-known member
Personally, I'd want the herd I buy a bull from to be trich free, vaccinations mean squat... I'm small enough I have good control over which animals come and go around here, so as long as my bulls are good, I'll be fine.. However, if I were running on community pastures or had neighbors with shady cattle, perhaps I would consider it.
Ricebelt a lot of the bulls from the Texas/Louisiana border are advertised as vaccinated for warts. That adds resale value to a bull for your customers. Again, if two bulls are relatively equal I am going with the breeder who vaccinated. That alone tells me you are willing to go the extra mile to sell good breeding stock.
I hope he heard right on a vaccine that will work on bulls. I haven't heard of anything that will work on a bull that has Trich other than to cut his head off. Trich is a bad deal for sure and anything we can do to insure we don't have it in our herd is a plus. We do trich test and so far have never had an animal come back positive thank goodness. We also quarantine any new animals for 60 days before they are introduced into the herd, we don't bring in many new ones but don't want to take a chance if we do.
gizmom
gizmom
It's a vaccine, not a cure. When MO first started trich testing all bulls being sold I asked the state vet about a vaccine for it. AT that time the vaccine wasn;t considered to be very effective for it. Hopefully in the past couple of years that has improved.gizmom":2matgvsm said:
I believe this is pretty new research. Anything that will help a customer is worth doing, impo. If I run across those slides I'll post the link. I was wrangling our 6 year old and missed the part my husband thinks he heard, but I distinctly remember that only half the amount of cows became infected from vaccinated bulls vs. non-vaccinated.
The attraction of the trich vaccine would be as an insurance policy against your bull jumping the fence and getting into an infected herd. If that happens now he has bought himself a one way ticket to the barn. That would suck if you just paid a lot of money for a bull. If the vaccine is even 60% effective against a situation like that the cost and effort would seem to be worth it.
