Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD)
- Recommendations
▶️ The veterinarian should consider BRD as a highly economic disease as it induced severe economic losses by reducing the daily weight gain of the affected calve, the cost of treatment and veterinary care, and the mortalities. Therefore, he should exert efforts for avoiding the negative consequences of BRD.
▶️ The veterinarian should obtain a detailed history about the feeding system, the management system, and stocking since malnutrition, environmental stressors can affect cattle susceptibility to catch the disease as predisposing factor.
▶️ On-farm BRD case definitions with records ensure early disease detection and monitoring of health events.
▶️ The veterinarian should examine the affected animal to record any signs of depression, drooped head and ears, nasal and ocular discharge, coughing, and labored breathing and dyspnea.
▶️ The veterinarian should assess the occurrence of BRD in the farm by application of clinical respiratory score, especially in young calf in which the disease is more life threatening.
▶️ The most common viral diseases associated to BRD include IBR, BVD, BRSV, PI-3, BRCV. The veterinarian should be able to clinically identify and differentiate between these viruses to take relevant control measures.
▶️ The veterinarian should be aware of the early signs of BRD. BRD-affected animals have less frequent visits to the feed, and for less time. Therefore, he should immediately start to examine those animals carefully.
▶️ The veterinarian should use the stethoscope for auscultation of lung area which can be a valuable tool for preliminary clinical diagnosis of BRD (specially inflammatory changes with consolidation).
▶️ The veterinarian can recommend the use of more accurate tools for diagnosis by using ultrasonography which is considered as a gold standard examination to confirm lung damage (inflammation, consolidation, abscess).
▶️ If specific infectious disease is suspected, the veterinarian should study the epidemiological status (prevalence, mortality and morbidity rates) in the affected farms.
▶️ In case of specific infectious causes, veterinarian should collect relevant samples from nasal discharge or tracheal swabs and send the samples in ice to the lab. for conducting culture and sensitivity testing for antibiotic of choice that should be used, or to collect blood and serum to make further bacteriological or serological examinations.
▶️ The veterinarian should recommend further etiological identification on nasal or blood samples by performing polymerase chain reaction to confirm diagnosis of certain specific bacterial or viral diseases.
▶️ The veterinarian should conduct a PM examination on dead calves. Cranioventral reddening and firm to hard consolidation of the lung with fibrinous pleuritis are common PM findings in bacterial causes of BRD. While in viral causes of BRD, cranioventral lung appeared red-purple and slightly firm-rubbery.
▶️ The veterinarian should examine the mucous membranes for any change, especially the blue color related to respiratory failure and lung dysfunction.
▶️ The veterinarian should recommend treatment by using broad spectrum antibiotics or based on culture and sensitivity test. Early treatment is recommended to overcome the mortalities and economic losses.
▶️ If infectious cause is suspected, veterinarian should apply strict hygienic measures.
▶️ Vaccination against respiratory virus is advised from day one till the time of weaning to reduce the spread of viral agents. There are different vaccines that can be used, such as the inactivated pnumo-5 vaccine (against DVD1, BVD2, IBR, PI3, and BRCV). Another type of vaccine is help protect against respiratory disease caused by bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV), infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) virus and parainfluenza3 (PI3) virus. For dairy herds, INFORCE 3 can be used in calves as young as 3 days old, at weaning, before moving to group pens, or with cows and heifers.
▶️ Veterinarian could apply prophylactic doses of antibiotics, especially when the claves are subjected to stress factors (such as shipping or ne introduction into the herd. Prophylactic antibiotics may be used as a means of decreasing acute respiratory disorders for several days after arrival at the feedlot (and to improve growth performance. A subcutaneous injection of 2.5 mg of tulathromycin/kg is effective against protection of BRD in calves.
▶️ Veterinarians should carefully evaluate the effectiveness of using antibiotics in treatment and prophylaxis of BRD because malpractice, may lead to increased antimicrobial resistance (AMR).