Preparing for weaning: Timelines for dosing, castration and vaccinations
Suckler farmers have been reminded of the key timelines for dosing, castration and vaccinations to ensure health is protected when weaning their spring-born suckler calves.
John Donlon, researcher and vet at Teagasc Grange, joined Catherine Egan on a recent episode of the Beef Edge podcast, where he explained: “It is very important to have your planning done well ahead of time.”
Ideally, John noted, castration should occur before the calf is six months of age as, after this point, the services of a vet will be required to complete the procedure. On the wait time between castration and weaning, he recommend 3-4 weeks in order to give the calf sufficient time to recover.
Dosing
Pre-weaning dosing is generally carried out two weeks prior to weaning, John noted, as this will alleviate the calf of stomach worm and lungworm burdens. However, he noted, that the necessity to dose will vary from farm to farm.
“It is very important to keep an eagle eye on the calves for coughing at grass because lungworm is an issue, especially when we get warm and damp weather. That will be a major disease burden that could occur and we really don’t want it occurring at the same time as weaning because lungworm will damage the calf’s lungs, and then the potential for pneumonia will be even more increased,” he added.
On quantifying the need to dose for stomach worms, John recommended the use of faecal egg counts to assess the worm burden and discuss the results with your vet to select the most appropriate dosing strategy for your farm pre weaning.
Vaccinations
Like castration and dosing, John noted that pre-weaning vaccination programmes need to be planned out well in advance, as both intranasal and injectable forms are available – offering different timelines of protection and onsets of immunity for respiratory diseases.
Intranasal vaccines, he noted, have a relatively quick onset of immunity, as one single shot of vaccine is administered through the nose and immunity develops at a local level. However, the duration of protection is generally shorter – often only 12 weeks – for such vaccines.
Injectable vaccines, on the other hand, often require a two-shot programme – with 4-6 weeks between each shot, depending on the product – to offer sufficient protection, which generally occurs 2-3 weeks following the administration of the second shot.
Given the differences in the onset of immunity and the different programmes available, he recommended: “You will need to speak to your vet about how long before weaning you need to implement vaccine programmes.”
He continued: “You really need to count back from when you expect to wean your animals, figure out the vaccine you are going to use, and have that vaccine programme started in time to have immunity kicked in for when those animals are weaned.”
For more details on preparing for weaning, listen to the Beef Edge podcast below: