Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

“We need to put our minds to it, get together and get it done,” Hana Van Campen, Ph.D., DVM, said of the Scandinavian countries that have totally eliminated bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) from their herds. “There’s a cultural difference in those countries.” Van Campen said. “Their people decided to get rid of BVD because they could see the economic impact it would have. They just went for it.”

Van Campen had an awakening to the economic ramifications BVD can have for cattle producers while working with ranchers in Wyoming where BVD presented big problems and could cause “big wrecks.”

“We didn’t have the tools to help with diagnosis and treatment,” Van Campen said. Which was very frustrating. She could see that the disease was spreading within herds and suspected it was the persistently infected (PI) animals that kept it going by producing and shedding large amounts of the virus.

New rapid BVD tests are now available that identify those persistently infected animals, giving producers, stockers and feedyard staff the ability to identify and eliminate them from the herd or pen.

Van Campen is currently working on research that will hopefully create a model to simulate BVD spread in beef herds. This model would then be used to test the efficacy of BVD vaccines in preventing fetal infections and in examining the pathogenesis of BVD fetal infections and the role of BVD in wildlife health.

The truth is in the tale
Rick Hrbacek, a rancher and stocker from Lockney, Texas, explained his experience with PIs recently during a Beck Ag telepanel sponsored by IDEXX Laboratories, which produces test kits for the beef industry.

“Well, I’ve been in this cattle business since 1979. I was very, very young then and, pretty naïve.” Hrbacek said. He tried vitamins and minerals to treat the debilitating illness that kept cropping up in his herds, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

“When they came out with the BVD-PI test and said the positive PI calves will never get over it, that kind of inspired me. We might be onto something here.”

Hrbacek first tested a group of 1,200 head and didn’t come up with a single infected animal.

“You’ll run through 700, 800 or 900 head of cattle and won’t see a positive test and you’ll get lax in your testing,” Hrbacek explained. “I happened to leave two PIs in there before I got my test back, which was four days after I received the cattle, and it was a major wreck.”

Ron Kramer, vice president of Camp Cooley Beef, a division of Camp Cooley Ranch in Franklin, Texas, was also on the Beck Ag telepanel and agreed with Hrbacek about the value of testing. “One of Camp Cooley Beef’s projects is to put cow-calf producers in a favorable market position with cattle feeders, and we are promoting BVD testing at the ranch level.

“I am also involved in a grow yard at Groom, Texas,” Kramer said. “We have been BVD-PI testing there since it started and have seen really dramatic results.”

When asked what caused them to get into testing, Kramer said they finally realized that BVD isn’t just an isolated disease that shows up occasionally in one load. And it isn’t something that can’t be managed. He feels that now they have the tools to find those PIs and get them isolated so they quit shedding virus on all of the other animals.

According to Kramer, sometimes it takes a big wreck to demonstrate the value of PI testing. “I guess one of the first things that really woke me up to it was when we got a tremendous set of calves into the yard. They were really the right kind that everybody wants.” And as it turned out, there were a number of PI calves in the group.

“That entire group of calves was one of those health wrecks that all producers have been through at one time or another,” Kramer said.

Hrbacek summed it up well. “We used to have the chronic cattle – those calves that would dry up and, 40 or 50 days down the road, they’d still keep hanging on, so we’d finally just quit doctoring them and throw then out to live or die. Since we started PI testing our sale barn cattle, we’re seeing less than one percent of that now. It’s really made a big difference in our ‘chronic” pen.’

A real believer
Jim Schwertner, owner of Capitol Land and Livestock, is probably one of the strongest supporters of the new rapid PI tests. “I want you to know that I am more excited about BVD-PI testing than anything I’ve done in a long time,” Schwertner said recently. “It works and is the silver bullet I’ve been looking for.”

Silver bullet or not, Schwertner offers PI testing on all of the cattle he sends out of Capitol and tests all the Schwertner Select cattle they background in Texas and feed in feedyards across the country.

Schwertner is such a strong believer in BVD-PI testing that he is part owner, along with several feedlot owners and veterinarians, in Gold Standard Labs, a disease-testing company with four locations in Texas and Kansas.

Schwertner agrees with Van Campen that, like the Scandinavians, with work, we may eliminate BVD from our shores, too.