Treating bovine respiratory disease is expensive. Plain and simple. The average cost of a BRD antibiotic treatment is $23.60. However, what can get even more expensive than treating BRD is not treating BRD effectively.
Death losses
BRD is behind about 50 to 70 percent of cattle deaths on feedlots each year.If we only consider the purchase price of the calf, assuming $900 per head, every 1 percent mortality would add a $9-per-head cost to your breakeven.
But when you lose an animal to BRD, you lose more than just what you paid for that calf. For every increase in mortality, there are additional increases to the breakeven for your operation. On top of the purchase price, you have to consider additional expenses prior to death, including treatment and re-treatment medications you purchased to try to help treat BRD, labor costs of pulling and re-treating that animal multiple times, feed costs and opportunity costs.
Chronic losses
BRD also is behind about 75 percent of cattle illnesses on feedlots each year. If any of those cattle don’t respond to treatment, these chronic animals can add up to be at least half of your mortality costs, but likely more. Chronic cattle experience permanent health damage and add costly long-term performance losses. Some research shows chronics can be costlier than deads when you consider cost of feed, yardage interest and opportunity cost.
For example, one study published in 2013 found net return to be up to $30.37 per head for cattle never treated for BRD compared with minus $45.52 per head for cattle receiving more than three treatments, or a difference of $75.89 per head.
Save more money and cattle
There isn’t a way to predict whether or not a load of cattle will be a wreck, but thanks to several recent studies, we know which antibiotics can help treat BRD more successfully. In fact, some antibiotics can result in almost doubling repeat BRD treatments as well as doubling mortalities and chronics on your operation due to poorer efficacy. As I shared above, if we only look at the purchase price of a calf, assuming $900 per head, this means that at a 1 percent mortality rate you would be doubling the $9-per-head cost to your breakeven. You would be adding at least an $18-per-head death loss expense using an antibiotic treatment that’s 50 percent less effective.
With your BRD treatment, you’re not only protecting your profits but also the life of your cattle. Starting with a more effective treatment can help you make fewer antibiotic treatment courses and decrease the significant impact deads and chronics have on your operation before it’s too late.
