Cattle research is expensive and time consuming work. This partly explains why progress is so slow in getting major diseases under control.

Researchers at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon recently completed a research trial studying the impact of having calves that were persistently infected (PI) with BVD virus born into beef cow herds.

They found out that more calves were treated and more calves died in herds that had PI calves. Beef herds with PI calves also had lower weaning weights for all their calves not just the PI calves.

This is important information if you are trying to make a decision on whether it is economically justified to spend money on controlling BVD.

What isn’t clear from reading the results is how much work it takes to generate that answer. The researchers needed to find 61 beef herds whose owners were willing to collect health and growth data the researchers needed on each calf for at least a year.

Researchers then had to collect a sample of skin from all the calves in the herds (almost 6,000 calves) and have them tested to find out if the calves were PI with BVD virus.

Every calf had to be weighed before it left the ranch at weaning. Finally, all the paper records from the ranches had to be entered into a computer then checked to make sure there weren’t any mistakes.

Next, one of the researchers analyzed the data then wrote up the report on their findings.

Another recent study looks at the potential benefits of pasteurizing colostrum to try to prevent the spread of Johne’s disease.

It is important to know if pasteurization does protect calves because it is a lot of work to use pasteurization. The researchers collected colostrum from dairy cows with Johne’s disease.

They then fed two groups of calves either pasteurized or unpasteurized colostrum and followed the calves for a year. At the end of the year, they examined the calves and found out that the calves fed pasteurized colostrum had lower infection levels but that they weren’t free of the bacterium that causes Johne’s disease.

When you hear the results of this study, it may not be clear how difficult it is to do research on Johne’s disease. For one thing, cattle don’t develop Johne’s disease until months to years after they are infected.

That means research trials must last a long time. During that time, researchers must keep the calves from getting infected by the Johne’s bacterium in ways other than the one being studied. This can be difficult and expensive.

At the end of the study, the researchers then need to find out if the calves do have Johne’s disease. This is difficult process that can take weeks in a laboratory.

These are some of the reasons why there is not a lot of Johne’s research that can be used on farms.

Of course, any information is only useful if the people who need it to make decisions about their own cattle can find out about it. The final step for any research is to make sure that people who need the information get it.