This week their was an article circulating that was spreading fear because it was claimed that mRNA vaccines were being used in livestock and than had several customers question what vaccines we use. We want to lead off by saying we aren't vaccine experts nor are we veterinarians. We use a vaccine plan that was recommended to us by our veterinarian though and have enough biology background to explain the process and type of vaccines that we use.
So to get right to it we use 2 different vaccines in our cattle, all of our cattle receive one of them and only our breeding stock receives the second. We will start with what we use for all animals. This year we used a product known as Vision 7 made by Merck. This vaccine is a toxoid vaccine that protects our cattle from a variety of diseases but primarily for 7 Clostridial diseases that naturally occur and come from the soil along with Pinkeye. It is important for us to vaccinate for pinkeye in our region because this is one of the biggest reasons for antibiotic use. If we can avoid pinkeye it makes it much easier to avoid ever using antibiotics in our cattle. For reference this vaccine is going to be very similar to the tetanus shot that we all receive. This is pretty old technology and is known to be a very safe and effective vaccine.
The second shot that we use is known as Bovi-Shield Gold and is made by Zoetis. This shot is for our breeding animals and is given pre-calving to help the mothers pass antibodies to the newborn calves. This vaccine is a modified live virus and again is well known technology and again a very safe vaccine. This is going to be similar to the MMR vaccine that most people receive. The vaccine that we use on our cattle helps prevent several different diseases including multiple strains of lepto which causes cattle to abort calves along with providing protection for calves against respiratory diseases.
Final thoughts that we want to add is that we do this to help produce healthy cattle that won't hopefully ever need antibiotics in their lives. This helps us produce happy, healthy, and productive cattle. Secondly both of these vaccines are approved for organic use depending on the certifying body, so organic beef will have most likely received the same or similar vaccines.