Cattle Health: Don't Limit Genetic Potential Through Bad Management

Management impacts on marbling actually begin prior to an animal's birth, as inadequate passive immune transfer at birth becomes an important factor in an animal's susceptibility of bovine respiratory disease (Galyean et al., 1999). Management and nutrition practices that keep cattle from becoming sick are very important because diagnosis of cattle with respiratory diseases is very difficult.

Gardner et al. (1999) reported that lung lesions from respiratory disease at weaning were present in 33% of their steers at harvest. Lung lesions were present in 37% of steers that had been treated with antibiotics after weaning and 29% of steers never diagnosed with respiratory disease. Steers with lung lesions had lower average daily gains, lighter carcass weights, deposited less internal fat and marbling, and had less tender steaks than animals without lung lesions. This emphasizes the need to carefully monitor individual cattle, and to manage cattle in a way that prevents disease outbreaks.

Research at the Meat Animal Research Center (Wittum et al., 1996) found that 35% of 469 steers in one study were treated for a respiratory disease episode between birth and harvest. In their study, 78% of treated cattle had lung lesions at harvest, and 68% of untreated cattle had lung lesions at harvest. While both groups had high percentages of lung lesions, the authors concluded that if an animal was sick enough to be identified as having a respiratory illness and treated, performance reducing lung damage had already occurred.

If a calf gets a respiratory disease, tissue damage occurs, and nutrients are diverted from lean growth and marbling toward repair of the damaged tissue. Additionally, restricted feeding or certain programmed gain strategies (Knoblich et al., 1997, Loerch and Fluharty, 1998) and aggressive implant programs (Hersenmeyer et al., 2000) have all been shown to decrease an animal's marbling ability. Therefore, to insure that an animal's health and management history did not limit its ability to deposit marbling or to grow to its potential, individual animal identification, comprehensive animal management, and marketing must be practiced.

EDITOR's NOTE: Following a theme similar to that indicated above, this winter during a series of meetings hosted simultaneously in several Ohio State University County Extension offices, Dr. Fluharty and others will focus on optimizing profits in the beef cattle business through effective feed and mineral management, reproduction, marketing and animal well being. Save each Thursday evening in February, plus March 3rd on your calendar. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.

Source: Francis L. Fluharty, Ph.D., Department of Animal Sciences, The Ohio State University

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