For Better Health, Ship Them Full

Abstract

Shipping fever is the number one health problem confronting the stocker cattle producer. This problem increases production costs and affects the consumer as the overall costs change. Historically, records show in our area that 40% of these cattle become sick, 5% die and 1 % remains chronically ill. A question frequently asked all of you is, "How much money do I lose when an animal becomes sick?" Death loss costs are easy to figure. We know there is some loss from morbidity, but determining a dollar and cents value is difficult. In order to obtain some facts upon which to determine costs, we conducted three trials involving 224 head.