Vaccinations

Vaccinations introduce the body to weakened or inactive pathogens that could normally cause an illness. When the body detects the foreign substance, it reacts by producing antibodies to destroy the pathogen. These antibodies are exactly the tools needed to fight off a real pathogen. By administering vaccinations to calves, producers can give the animals the best fighting chance to survive future exposure to pathogens.

By preventing infections, vaccines can reduce the need to use antimicrobials to treat primary or secondary infections. They can also help rule out certain pathogens as the cause of a disease, which can allow for the use of more targeted, narrower-spectrum antimicrobials. By reducing disease pressures in the herd, vaccines can also help to decrease infections in animals that are not vaccinated, and may also have an effect on bacterial population densities and resistant gene exchange rates [1],[2].

External Resources

References

[1]         K. Hoelzer et al., ‘Vaccines as alternatives to antibiotics for food producing animals. Part 1: challenges and needs’, Vet. Res., vol. 49, no. 1, p. 64, Jul. 2018, doi: 10.1186/s13567-018-0560-8.

[2]         M. Lipsitch and G. R. Siber, ‘How Can Vaccines Contribute to Solving the Antimicrobial Resistance Problem?’, mBio, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. e00428-16, Jun. 2016, doi: 10.1128/mBio.00428-16.