Rising Mortality Rates on Feedlots

No matter the time of year, animal health is the top priority for livestock producers. Gary Vogel, a technical advisor for Elanco Animal Health, says, tracking feedlot data has revealed feedlot-based mortalities have increased consistently by .05 percent for the past ten years. Here’s why…

“So when we look at mortality and again most veterinarians try and classify cattle into primarily 3 causes. One is respiratory death loss, the other is digestive or metabolic death loss.”

Mortalities from the feed yard perspective differs in that data is collected after closeout…

“We see differences in when the mortality closes. And quite often when we look at data and information, a lot of time we look at when cattle close or close out. That may be the first time a producer or cattle feeder actually looks at the information. And because of that the mortalities, when you look at closeout typically tend to be higher in that August/September time frame and that’s mainly because those cattle of been on feed through the last part of winter and early part of spring and summer, and it succumbs all the way in a closeout at the end of the month.”

Mortalities differ slightly and it’s based on region…

“We do see that regional differences that occur in feedlot mortality. Generally speaking we see less overall mortality in northern feed yards i.e. Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska – and more mortality in the southern yards. That really is because of where the supply of calves come  from as we tend to feed a lot more higher risk sale barn cattle in the south compared to the northern feed yards. In terms of when does the mortality actually occur? That typically tends to occur in the fall. So we see increases mortally in feed yards happening in that same July, August, September, probably October, November time frames.”

The challenge as a producer is while prevention is possible, mortality just happens.

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