COSBY, Mo.-- If your aim is to improve calf health and beef quality, don't discount the value of today's "multi-valent" vaccine. Modern vaccine technology allows those products to actively protect against a variety of calf diseases with only a single 2 mL injection per dose. Opting to use one combination product, rather than "parting out" your vaccinations with numerous narrower products, helps broaden disease protection, reduce the number of injections and potential for beef-quality problems, and hold down your product and labor costs.
So where's the downside?
Sometimes old myths just die hard, says Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Professional Services Veterinarian Dr. Phil Widel.
"The old conventional wisdom seems to hang around that combining multiple antigens in a vaccine could somehow compromise their effectiveness," Dr. Widel says. "But there's no reason to suspect today's vaccines present any such risk. In fact, we can point to some older research showing that combining as many as 17 to 18 antigens in a single vaccine did not compromise immune response."
Any multi-valent vaccine approved for mass-market sale in the United States has been tested and verified by USDA to be safe and effective when given as the label recommends, according to Dr. Widel. As part of the routine product testing to obtain USDA licensing for multi-valent vaccines, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica has conducted numerous studies to examine the question of interference.
One such study, led by Dr. Widel in 2005, vaccinated 40 six-month-old beef calves with either Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica's EXPRESSÒ5-PHM or PULMO-GUARDTMPH-M. EXPRESS 5-PHM contains components to protect against the four important viral diseases of cattle (IBR-BVD Types 1 & 2-PI3-BRSV) in combination with Mannheimia haemolytica and Pasteurella multocida components to protect against bacterial pneumonia. PULMO-GUARD PH-M contains only the bacterial components.
Results of Dr. Widel's study showed the immune response to Mannheimia haemolytica and the critical leukotoxoid component of the vaccines were similar, regardless of whether they were given in combination with the virals or given alone. He also repeated the experiment on a subset of calves known to have been exposed to Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (IBR) at some point in the past. Dr. Widel's team was particularly interested in the impact of IBR because a single 15-year-old study from Canada using an experimental bacterial vaccine containing M. haemolytica hinted IBR antibodies circulating in the blood might somehow interfere with the animal’s ability to respond to the M. haemolytica vaccination.
However, Dr. Widel's 2005 study confirmed that whether the calves were negative or positive to IBR before vaccination made no statistically significant difference in the response to the Mannheimia portion of the Express 5-PHM vaccine. In either case, the multi-valent vaccine dependably stimulated an immune response.
"These results showed that by giving a viral and then waiting two weeks to follow it with a M. haemolytica and/or P. multocida vaccine producers are causing themselves more work and taking on more risk of disease.
"The bottom line is that the more disease protection you can administer in one vaccination, the less opportunity you have to create an injection site reaction that could become a beef-quality issue. Our trials show no interference or other issues with EXPRESS 5 PHM because of combining antigens to the greatest extent possible."
In fact, Dr. Widel credits the use of better multi-valent vaccines, along with improved technique and more attention to the problem, as some of the major reasons for the latest Beef Quality Audit findings that U.S. producers have made great strides during the last decade in eliminating injection-site quality problems from their cattle.
"In the sense of a BQA issue," agrees Craig Payne, DVM, Beef Veterinary Extension Specialist for University of Missouri at Columbia. "'all-in-one' vaccine administration makes logical sense. Unless and until we find concrete information indicating there's a need to separate antigens, my preference would be to combine them, as long as there's no adverse reactions associated with doing so."
And regardless of which vaccine product you choose, Dr. Payne reminds producers, remember to always follow label directions, use subQ injection whenever possible, inject in the neck, don't administer more than 10 milliliters per site, and keep vaccines cool to maintain viability of modified-live vaccine components.
