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VM
577 Herd Production Medicine
Getting Connected to Information Pipelines
Version 3.3 Updated
08/19/05
Objective:
The objective is to help students begin identifying and using sources of current
herd production medicine information, particularly
via the Internet, that they will need in practice to solve problems and
remove bottlenecks in client's
herds and to begin networking with innovative colleagues.
Rationale:
Practitioners
need efficient ways to keep up on developments in agricultural animal veterinary
medicine. Professional knowledge is constantly advancing, new diseases are
recognized or old ones emerge in a new form, technology is constantly evolving (e.g., ultrasound)
and the livestock industry changes rapidly because of the great economic
pressure of low margins and price volatility. This advancing knowledge may come from bench research, field
studies, collective practitioner experience or the allied industries and may
appear in the primary scientific literature, proceedings of professional
organizations, proceedings of trade meetings, trade publications, or industrial
sources. Because the need for an update on a given topic is most often driven by the
immediate need to solve a particular problem occurring in a
client's herd, the ability and means to do this both efficiently and timely is
very important. Now being available in the remotest of areas, the Internet
provides the most rapid access to information.
For the purposes of this class, the following is focused primarily on the bovine.
Books:
Books provide the fundamentals for approaching herd problems.
However, due to the time required for the writing and
publishing process, books are usually not current in all the areas they cover.
The fundamental core is a large animal medicine text, such as Blood and
Radostit's "Veterinary Medicine: A Textbook of the Diseases of Cattle,
Sheep, Pigs, Goats and Horses", Rebhun's "Diseases of Dairy
Cattle", or Smith's "Large Animal Internal Medicine".
Herd Production Medicine Texts:
The next level are those texts targeted specifically at
dealing with herd-level rather than individual problems.
Radostits, OM, ed. (2001). Herd Health: Food
Animal Production Medicine 3rd edition, Saunders,
884 pp. ISBN
0-7216-7694-4.
From the Publisher: Herd Health offers integrated coverage
of all aspects of herd animals-dairy and beef cattle, calves, sheep, and
swine-in one volume. It provides effective new strategies for herd health
management. It gives veterinary students the basic knowledge and framework for
production-oriented animal health management and also gives veterinary
practitioners information to provide animal health management services to
every segment of the livestock industry. It integrates veterinary medicine,
animal husbandry, nutrition and housing, and animal welfare as they relate to
production management, acquaints veterinarians with economical programs that
allow for the most effective production of healthy livestock, resulting in the
best-quality food products, and offers an invaluable grasp of crucial issues
such as how to avoid contamination of meat and milk with antimicrobial
residues, antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, growth-enhancing hormones, and
other potential health hazards.
Table of Contents, 3rd ed:
- General principles of health management in food-producing
animals, Otto M. Radostits
- Quantitative tools for production-oriented veterinarians,
Barrett D. Slenning
- Records systems and herd monitoring in
production-oriented health management programs in food-producing animals,
Jeffery K. Reneau and Mark L. Kinsel
- Control of infectious diseases in food-producing animals,
Otto M. Radostits
- Investigation of disease outbreaks and suboptimal
productivity, Cheryl Waldner
- Dairy cattle health and production, Pamela L. Ruegg
- Maintaining reproductive efficiency in dairy cattle,
Peter W. Farin and Barrett D. Slenning
- Culling and genetics in dairy cattle, George E. Shook
- Health management of dairy calves and replacement
heifers, A. Judson Heinrichs and Otto M. Radostits
- Mastitis control in dairy herds, Ron Erskine
- Dairy cattle nutrition, Brian J. Gerloff
- Dairy cattle housing and environmental management, W.G.
Bickert and Otto M. Radostits
- Health management in beef cattle breeding herds, Peter J.
Chenoweth, Michael W. Sanderson
- Health and production management in beef feedlots, Robert
A. Smith, Gerald L. Stokka, Otto M. Radostits, and D. Dee Griffin
- Planned animal health and production in swine herds,
Robert B. Morrison, Scott Allen Dee, and John Deen
- Health and production management for sheep
Brand, A, JPTM Noordhuizen, YH Shukken (eds.) (2nd reprint
1998) Herd health and production management in dairy practice, ISBN
90-74134-34-3 2001 , 543 pp. http://www.wageningenacademic.com/
From the publisher: The main aim of this book is to
teach students, practitioners and farm advisors how to give management
support to the dairy farmer in order to optimize the health, productivity
and welfare of the herd. Management practices and farm conditions which
have both positive and negative influences on these aspects are covered,
rather than a more traditional focus on specific diseases. The core
element in this methodology is the protocol. In order to illustrate the
standard protocol the practitioner and farm advisor are taken through a
farm visit, during which operational and problem-solving issues are
addressed. These issues include: nutrition, health care, reproduction,
milk production, replacement rearing and farm economics.
Contents:
-
Herd Health and Production Management Programs
-
Monitoring Replacement Rearing
-
Monitoring Dry Period Management
-
Monitoring Milk Production
-
Monitoring Reproductive Performance
-
Monitoring Udder Health
-
Monitoring Foot Health
-
Approach for Control of Infectious Diseases in
Cattle Herds
-
Animal Health and Dairy Production in
Developing Countries
Note that useful chapters appear in other books, such as Current
Therapy in Large Animal Theriogenology. Also, some chapters in previous
editions are worth reading because the specific material may have been omitted
from subsequent editions due to the lack of space or different
authorship.
Animal Husbandry and Management Texts:
Given that your "competition" (e.g., your
client's other information providers - feed company reps.,
pharmaceutical company reps., university extension personnel) often have at least
undergraduate training in animal science and that your clients expect you
to have at least the same level of understanding, you should be familiar with
the material in the capstone animal science courses for that industry.
For dairy:
Van Horn, AH, CJ Wilcox (eds.). (1992 - getting
dated). Large
Dairy Herd Management. American Dairy Science
Association,
Champaign, Ill. 825 pages. ISBN 0-9634491-0-9. $60.00 member, $120
non-member, %40 discount for order of ten or more.
http://www.adsa.org/jds/adsapubi.html
(Amazon)
For beef:
Field, TG, RE Taylor (2002). Beef
Production and Management Decisions, 4th ed. Prentice Hall.
ISBN 0-13-088879-6, $113.00. 768 p. (Amazon)
Review Series:
Reading focused reviews are an excellent way to get up to
speed on a given topic. Each issue of Veterinary Clinics focuses on a
particular topic with each paper reviewing an aspect of that topic. The
website lists past issues that are still available.
Veterinary Clinics of North America: Food Animal
Practice (3x/yr, $113.00 per yr.)
Harcourt Health Sciences
http://www.harcourthealth.com/fcgi-bin/displaypage.pl?isbn=07490720
"Connection" Activities:
For the purposes of this class, you are expected to complete the
following connection activities.
- Join the American Association of Bovine Practitioners as a student member
(students $15 / year).
Professional associations are one of the major ways that
practitioners keep up to date, to share ideas and to network with innovative
practitioners pushing the envelope of herd production medicine.
The AABP is an international association of
veterinarians organized to enhance the professional lives of its members
through relevant continuing education that will improve the well-being of
cattle and the economic success of their owners, increase awareness and
promote leadership for issues critical to cattle industries, and improve
opportunities for careers in bovine medicine. The AABP has a particularly
strong seminar series associated with their annual meeting. Annually the AABP
recognizes innovative beef and dairy practitioners who are widely esteemed by
their peers through sponsored awards at the national meeting.
The AABP has a page of topics and links for students at http://www.aabp.org/;
click on "Students".
Other subscription contact information is the following:
AABP
Post Office Box 1765
Rome, GA 30162-1755
Phone: 800-COW-AABP (269-2227) FAX: 706 232-2232
Email: aabphq@aabp.org
Beef cow-calf / feedlot interest (optional but
recommended):
Join the Academy of
Veterinary Consultants as a student member. The AVC is an
association of veterinarians involved in beef cattle medicine, herd health
programs and consultation. The AVC mission is to provide continuing
education, member support and leadership among various entities of the beef
cattle industry. Membership in the AVMA is required.
To join as student member, contact Dr.
Dee Griffin 402-762-4500 and provide him information on your student
status, career intentions and so on.
If you have interests in other production species, such
as small ruminants or swine, you should join the respective professional
organizations for practitioners interested in those species.
- Sign on to AABP-L discussion list (requires membership
in AABP), set it to the digest mode and learn to use keywords to search the AABP-L archives.
E-mail discussion lists are a great way for practitioners to
exchange ideas and to obtain input on a problem in a client's herd from fellow
practitioners who have seen similar problems or from academicians doing
research in the area. This list is archived, meaning that you can search for
previous discussions on a particular subject.
For information on how to sign on to AABP-L, go to the AABP
website and click on "AABP Resources" then "AABP-L
List Server". For information on how to set AABP-L to the digest mode (to
avoid being buried by e-mails) and how to search the archives, click on "AABP-L
Help Area (for current subscribers)" at the top of the "AABP-L
List Server" page and read "Help, I have too many messages! -
Take the Digest Mode Cure".
- Subscribe to producer-oriented trade magazines in your area of interest:
For several reasons, subscribe to the trade magazines in your area of
interest. First, many new ideas are written up in trade
magazines before they appear in the professional refereed journals. These
ideas may not prove out but you need to know what innovations are being tried. Second,
trade magazines cover the economics of the industry, consumer trends and other
issues impacting your clients. The better you understand these issues, the
better you can tailor your services and understand client decisions. Finally,
because many of the articles are about diseases and animal health issues and
your clients expect you to be knowledgeable in these areas, you need to see what
your clients are reading about diseases
that you are dealing with in their herds. Many of these trade magazines have
websites as well.
For dairy (selected):
For beef (selected - free to qualified):
I recommend that you organize among yourselves, make a list of
addresses for all the people that want a particular magazine and have one
person make the contact. You will need to explain that you are veterinary
students intending to practice in this particular industry. You are not
limited to these particular trade magazines.
- Join American Dairy Science Association ($10/year) or American Animal
Science Association ($20/yr).
Given that many production medicine problems involve nutrition,
that feed is the single largest expense
and that animal science journals contain considerably more nutrition research than
veterinary journals, these journals are worthwhile to subscribe to. Student
membership allows access to the 1995 to date Journal of Dairy Science
or Journal of Animal Science articles as PDF files. On-line access to
the JDSA articles will be particularly useful during your senior Food
Animal blocks.
Print out the membership application form
http://www.adsa.org/sad/memberapp.htm at:
http://www.adsa.org/sad.asp
(ADSA) http://www.asas.org/2002-03Application.pdf
(ASA)
Mail or FAX to:
American Dairy Science Association
1111 N. Dunlap Avenue
Savoy, IL 61874
Phone: 217/356-3182; FAX: 217/398-4119 e-mail:
adsa@assochq.org
American Society of Animal Science
1111 N. Dunlap Ave.
Savoy, IL 61874 Fax 217-398-4119
- Selected Examples of On-line Resources:
Familiarize yourself with the following websites by
browsing through them.
On-line Proceedings:
Beef Improvement Federation (click on symposium
papers or archives)
http://www.bifconference.com/
Range Beef Cow Symposium XVIII (12/03, Mitchell, NB
- click on presenter's name for slides, paper pdf or audio)
http://rangebeefcow.com/newspapersaudio.html
XVII Proceedings
Western Dairy Management Conference, Reno, NV
http://www.wdmc.org/proceed.htm
(1993 - 2001 proceedings on-line)
This is a major conference that many western dairy
producers and dairy veterinarians attend.
Western Canadian Dairy Seminar (University of Alberta -
entire 1995 to date proceedings are on-line)
http://www.wcds.afns.ualberta.ca/index.asp?page=/Proceedings/Index
(Note: this site is reorganized regularly)
Excellent papers on important topics from national authorities.
Economic and Production Benchmarks:
Having economic and production benchmarks is very
important for you and your clients as they provide a basis for comparison
to identify areas of strength, weakness and opportunity. Benchmark
comparison between herds is a important motivator for top end producers.
Center
for National Animal Health Surveillance (CNAHS)
USDA APHIS CNAHS regularly performs statistically
valid surveys of randomly selected livestock enterprises (e.g., beef
cow-calf, feedlot, dairy, swine) across the major states to determine
production losses, such as calf mortality, producer management practices,
such as transition cow management, health practices, such as what vaccines
producers actually used on what animals, and many other items. This is an
excellent source to determine what proportion of producers have adopted a
particular management practice advocated by veterinarians as well as
production and reproduction benchmarks. Click on a species in the top row
to view reports from all surveys dealing with that species or issue.
Selected Extension Materials:
National Ag Risk Education Library - Budget Section
(not completely current but large site)
http://www.agrisk.umn.edu/budgets/Default.aspx
Western Risk Management Library
http://agecon.uwyo.edu/RiskMgt/Default.htm
Software (includes enterprise spreadsheets)
http://agecon.uwyo.edu/RiskMgt/FinancialRisk/FINANCIALSoftware.htm
Publication Indexes:
Cornell Consultant (created and maintained by Dr. Maurice White,
Cornell food animal clinician) http://www.vet.cornell.edu/consultant/consult.asp
PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
This index, besides providing abstracts for those papers
having them, also has a very useful "Related Articles"
function that enables you to identify all the literature classified in
the same fashion as the citation to which the button is attached. Some
hits also have links to full text papers and other materials. PubMed is
covering more of the veterinary literature and includes most of the
major veterinary journals.
Specific On-line Disease Websites:
The following are my webpages containing links to selected on-line information for
producers and veterinarians that is
available on that specific disease.
Study Guide / Reading Lists of American Board of
Veterinary Practitioners:
The ABVP "seeks to
promote the highest of standards in contemporary veterinary clinical
practice" and enables practitioners to demonstrate that they
have considerable professional expertise in a particularly area of
veterinary practice, which they can then advertise under ethics standards
as being a specialist.
The following are study guides and reading lists for the ag animal
specialties relevant to this class.
Company Websites (selected examples):
forage site http://www.pioneer.com/usa/nutrition/index.htm
Monsanto Dairy On-line Connection http://www.monsantoDOC.com (requires
ID and password)
Sites on Issues Unfavorable or Potentially Unfavorable to
Livestock Agriculture
(selected examples):
You and your clients should be aware of such issues.
Consumers of your clients' products will certainly see them when they
search the web. For example, of 10 of the first hits from searching on "meat"
with Google recently, 2 were anti-meat
consumption and for "milk", 4.
Other On-line Resource Examples:
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