Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
During winter, when calves are being weaned and pregnancy tests conducted, cattle producers usually have all the necessary information available to plan for the next 12 months. This plan serves to incorporate insight gained from disease occurrences over the past year, while aiming to optimise herd management and minimise losses.
Vaccination is a key aspect of herd health that requires systematic planning. A well-structured immunisation plan serves as a guiding framework for other management decisions. To maximise effectiveness, vaccines must be administered at appropriate times and aligned with key factors such as seasonality (seasonal diseases), age (young animals), and production stage (mature animals). Therefore, the immunisation plan should provide a comprehensive overview of these variables over a 12-month timeline.
The plan should be structured to include:
- A 12-month overview of the year and corresponding seasons.
- A breakdown of the different age groups within the herd.
- A detailed overview of the four production stages of the mature herd.
Figure 1: The stages of production that dictate when to administer specific vaccines.
Your annual wall plan
All three variables are consolidated into a single spreadsheet, providing a structured format for developing the immunisation plan. Furthermore, this tool serves as a comprehensive resource for scheduling and documenting all planned health and production management activities. The annual plan (Table 1) allows for precise vaccination scheduling, ensuring that each vaccine is administered in the appropriate month and aligns with the broader farm management strategy.
Table 1: Annual plan for a farm where most calves are born in September and replacement heifers are first mated at two years of age (a month before the mature cows’ breeding season commences).
If there is no fixed breeding season, the immunisation plan will then focus on the month when most calves are born, ensuring a structured approach that accommodates the majority of the herd. If two fixed breeding seasons are utilised, a second immunisation plan should be developed for the later group once the first round has been completed.
Preventable diseases
For practical purposes, diseases can be broadly classified into the following categories:
- Deadly bacterial diseases.
- Insect-borne diseases.
- Diseases that affect reproduction.
- Tick-borne diseases.
- Complex diseases with more than one cause.
- Region-specific diseases.
The checklist (Table 2) of various diseases provided here, can be used by cattle producers in collaboration with their designated herd veterinarian as part of a structured approach to help determine which vaccinations should be considered. The veterinarian can further customise the checklist to suit local conditions by adding or removing specific vaccinations.
Table 2: Vaccination checklist.
Call to action
The action plan is straightforward: Schedule a consultation with your veterinarian and dedicate one to two hours each year for essential planning. This includes budgeting for the cost and timing of vaccine purchases.
An annual plan offers a comprehensive 12-month overview, allowing for the creation of detailed monthly action lists. These lists specify key aspects such as who is responsible, when tasks should be completed, and how each step should be carried out. They also facilitate thorough record-keeping so as to ensure consistent and efficient execution of the plan. – Dr Danie Odendaal, Veterinarian Network
For more information, contact Dr Danie Odendaal at 082 454 0532.
