Vaccination Programs and Safe Protocols with Extension Veterinarian Dr. Deanne Wilkinson

Dr. Deanne Wilkinson grew up near Oakville on a mixed grain and cow/calf farm and currently lives north of Ste. Rose du Lac and farms with her husband and 3 kids.

Together, they calve out approximately 80 purebred Gelbvieh and Balancer (registered Angus x Gelbvieh) cows and 20 commercial cows and run Gelbvieh, Balancer and Angus bulls.  They have gradually pushed their calving back to early May and calve in a large paddock.  They run their cows as one breeding group with multiple bulls and DNA all calves for parentage verification. 

Deanne completed her undergraduate at University of Guelph with two semesters on an exchange to SLU (Swedish agricultural university) and attended veterinary school at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, where she graduated in 2012.  Since then, she worked at a mixed animal practice in Russell MB for 3 years, followed by 6 years at a small animal practice in Dauphin, also running a solo vet, mixed animal ambulatory practice at that time. She started with Manitoba Agriculture in 2021 in the Extension Veterinarian position and has been working there since.

In this episode, we are discussing herd health planning. We start with a run through of the key times and activities producers need to be planning for in order to maintain a healthy and productive herd from cow-calf to backgrounding weaned calves.  Deanne shares how the immune system works and what occurs when an animal is given a vaccine.  She also describes the different types of vaccines and what someone should be looking for when comparing different products. 

We chat about some of the most common infectious diseases in beef cattle in Manitoba and in Canada, and how cattle are exposed to these pathogens.  Deanne gives us her tips and tricks that are important to ensure you know prior to administering a vaccine in order to have the best immune response and considerations for handling and administering them.  Further to this, we touch on why vaccines might fail in some scenarios.

We begin to wrap up the conversation with discussion on other management measures that are required to provide protection to your herd, what a “closed herd” is and how this may or may not change the vaccination protocol Dr. Wilkinson recommends. 

Finally, we end with a conversation around the ongoing discussion in beef marketing that avoids the use of vaccines, antibiotics, etc.  Dr. Wilkinson shares how safe meat consumption is after the withdrawal period has passed.  

For more information, please contact the Chief Veterinary Office at: chiefveterinaryoffice@gov.mb.ca or call 204-945-7663.

The research programs and daily operations at MBFI would not be possible without the funding from the Province of Manitoba, Government of Canada, and Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, as well as the partnership with Manitoba Agriculture, Manitoba Beef Producers (MBP) and Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC).

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