It has been estimated that by 2050, 10 million lives will be lost because of antibiotic resistance (more than anticipated through cancer) and the global economy will lose $100 trillion USD to health care costs associated with antibiotic resistance. At the same time, the number of people in poverty due to illness will increase. On top of the human medical implications, rising antibiotic resistance in food-production animals will lead to increases in disease outbreaks, losses and cost of treatments, leading to rising food prices and food security issues.
To combat this increase in antibiotic resistance in both animals and humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for countries to reduce the use, and misuse, of antibiotics. In Canada, as of December 1, 2018, all antibiotics will require a prescription, including those previously available in feed stores. This means farmers will need a valid relationship with a veterinarian to purchase antibiotics — a change that has been met with resistance from some producers.
The good news is that all it takes is a simple change of mindset. Rather than thinking of the veterinarian as an expense to be used only when animals are sick, producers should think of the veterinarian as an investment to minimize production losses due to disease. Remember, the biggest losses are reduced feed conversion throughout the entire herd — not just animal deaths.
My most memorable example of antibiotic and veterinarian misuse was when a producer would not have me examine a bull for foot-rot. The animal hadn’t responded to two different feed-store antibiotics, both of which are important to humans — penicillin and tetracycline. Insistent that it just needed a better antibiotic, the producer went to another veterinary clinic for other antibiotics when I refused to sell them to him. Eventually, after multiple $100 + treatments with the new antibiotics, he brought the bull in to be examined. It had a fully broken leg with exposed bone. No antibiotics would have treated it.
On top of the antibiotic misuse, this was a huge animal welfare issue that could have been prevented had the producer used the veterinarian to not only examine the animal, but for education as well. This isn’t the only case of animal abuse due to ignorance. Many farmers believe that their animals are happy and healthy but don’t properly treat or prevent an issue.
Animal health is the most important part of your farm. It drives the number of animals you will have to sell, how much they will produce and their nutritional efficiency. A disease’s economic impact isn’t just in animal death. Most of a herd’s losses are due to reduced production because the animal is fighting off disease.
For example, in the case of shipping fever in cattle (Bovine Respiratory Disease, or BRD), up to $150 per animal can be lost in lower carcass weights. This disease can be prevented by vaccines but because of the number of cow-calf producers not vaccinating for it, it is often treated with antibiotics at the feedlot.
With increasing antibiotic resistance, it becomes more and more difficult to quickly treat BRD, increasing the economic losses. What many cow-calf producers don’t realize is that if they vaccinate their animals and ensure the feedlots know they are vaccinated for the causes of shipping fever, they get a higher price at the auction! This is because they become lower risk animals, require fewer preventative treatments and are less likely to be sick. These same trends in production are seen in dairy milk, egg and wool production.
The best way to keep from experiencing these losses is to have your veterinarian set up a herd health plan and keep records for them to go over. (Excel isn’t just for taxes; it can be used for graphing weights and production numbers too.)
What is a proper herd-health? This is often where producers go wrong — most only call the veterinarian once multiple animals are sick and they’ve tried to treat the first cases themselves. This not only increases the cost of treating, because more intensive care is required, but often there are more animals impacted and likely, more animals dying. The best time to talk to your veterinarian is while things are calm.
It is important to note though, that your veterinarian isn’t just important for your herd’s health but fertility as well. Fertile livestock means more livestock offspring and more livestock product.
To best utilize your veterinarian, you need to have them involved in three major areas: nutrition (even if you also use a nutritionist as many diseases are nutritional and a joint effort between a nutritionist and veterinarian is best); herd health and biosecurity protocols and fertility monitoring. Your veterinarian can tie all three aspects together for you and give you advice and tips that you, your neighbours or Facebook group members, may not have experienced.
While what constitutes a valid veterinary client relationship to get prescription drugs will vary among provinces and their veterinary by-laws, ultimately, a valid relationship is one where you talk to your veterinarian regularly, they examine your herd and records and initiate herd-health programs with you based on what diseases you commonly see or are at risk of due to your farm’s management. The important thing to remember is that your veterinarian needs to know what your descriptions mean when you call. “Ain’t doing right” varies a lot among producers, from slightly tired to not dead yet. “It’s bleeding a lot” could be a tablespoon of blood or five gallons.
An important part of the vet/producer relationship is examining your handling facilities, pens, feed and your medical storage facilities. The most successful producers have a veterinarian out multiple times in the year to go over records and see what the pens look like. I always say, ‘Watch the run-off!’
Often a herd health regime is combined with regular herd procedures such as pregnancy diagnosis or fertility testing your male animals. Sometimes they are simply a consultation to go over your records.
In the end, rather than being irate about the law change, the real question you need to ask yourself as a producer is whether you want calling the veterinarian to be a hated expense or an investment to keep your farm running smoothly? We all know that it’s easier on everyone to avoid the stress of wondering if you will be able to make the loan payments at the end of an outbreak. Use this rule change as an opportunity to improve your farm.
How your local veterinarian can help you be more profitable
• Knowing what diseases your area has and therefore what your herd is at risk for and what can be done to protect your herd
• Biosecurity programs. Your veterinarian can go over your management and purchasing program to minimize the risk of you introducing diseases to your herd.
• Training. Knowing what signs are important and what treatments
to initiate based on the signs will minimize misuse of antibiotics and wasted money.
• Ensuring proper animal welfare, which is very important to customers.
• Nutrition information, feed and water testing — some veterinarians have degrees in animal nutrition and can either help with your diet formulations or refer you to a nutritionist. Remember that the vast majority of a farm’s expense is nutrition and ensuring there are no excesses or deficiencies minimizes this expense.
• Health monitoring programs such as fecal tests to determine if it is worth spending money to deworm.
• Ensuring the treatments you use actually treat what you need them to. The two most common are using generic ivermectins from the feed-store for deworming. Generic ivermectins don’t get all the types of intestinal worms. And, using antibiotics when it is a viral infection. Antibiotics don’t work on viruses.
• Ultimately, minimizing disease to ensure everything you feed your animal goes into production and isn’t wasted fighting a disease that could have been prevented.
Utilize Excel (or other record keeping) for these important records
These may change from veterinarian and farm but it is best to record a minimum of:
• Medications, vaccines, dewormers, etc. given — both as a herd preventative and individually as treatments are required.
• Production values: these will depend on your farm but for example: weaning weight, birth weight, eggs per day, litres of milk per day etc.
• Diseases: Animals sick, deaths, treatments given.
• Feeding program: how much of each feed for each time period, any changes, any issues noted with the feed (mould, wires, etc.).
• Animal Purchases: when, where you purchased them, the farm’s vaccine and health program.
• Fertility Records: numbers of open animals after the breeding season so you can tailor your feeding program, male fertility and breeding soundness to ensure they are able to efficiently breed thefemales. If using artificial insemination, then semen source information and breeding program used.
– Also has good graphics on how resistance is spread between humans and animals.
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This diagram, from the Health Canada document, Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use, represents how: 1) bacteria cause an infection 2) antibiotics are given to kill the bacteria 3) some bacteria that cause illness resist the antibiotic treatment 4) resistant bacteria continue to multiply and cause infection requiring antibiotics to treat and stop the spread of infection.
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This diagram, also from Health Canada, represents how human health, animal health, and the environment are all linked to the issue of antibimicrobial resistance (AMR). In a continuous circle, you can see how AMR is spread between: 1) humans 2) animals and humans including via food 3) animals 4) the environment, including via contaminated water and fertilizers.
Dr. Ryan Ridgway, DVM, is a mixed animal veterinarian practicing in Princeton, British Columbia.