Understanding the willingness of farms to utilize lung scanning in their cattle operations

View the project final report

Commodities

• Animals: bovine

Practices

• Animal Production: animal protection and health
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research
• Farm Business Management: feasibility study

Calves with lung damage have reduced growth, are older at first calving, and produce less milk in their first lactation, all which negatively impact farm profitability and sustainability. Even though this is known, bovine respiratory disease continues to challenge farmers because of the error associated with visual diagnosis. To mitigate this variation, thoracic ultrasonography (lung scoring) has become a quantitative way to study respiratory disease. Previous research has shown lung scanning to be an effective way to identify lung damage.  However, this technology’s practicality is not well understood when used in production settings. This project seeks to study how beneficial and cost-effective lung scanning could be for both dairy and beef operations. Using lung scanning to select healthier animals reduces the cost of raising replacement heifers and provides economic sustainability. By using lung scanning in beef backgrounding operations, there could be a decrease in antibiotic use and treatment costs. Therefore, the aim of this study is to introduce lung scanning to southwestern Indiana and understand what the benefits might be to the farming community.

1. Lung scan dairy replacement heifers around weaning (60 days) and four months as well as periodic body weights to gather growth data and best practices for using lung scanning on commercial dairy farms (ex. What is the best age to lung scan calves or do calves need to be scanned multiple times during their life?). 
2. Determine validity, usability, and practicality of utilizing lung scanning on beef backgrounding operation.
3. Report findings from lung scanning results and detailed overview of the lung scanning process at the Indiana Dairy Producers Annual Meeting (Meeting Brochure) following with a post survey identifying the willingness of farms to utilize this lung scanning service.