April/May 2025 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN 25 in Feedlot Cattle be less than 3.3. If a foot bath is too acidic it can make the feet and lower legs more susceptible to other infections. This is critical to monitor when using a foot bath! One of the biggest risk factors to spreading digital dermatitis is not cleaning pens thoroughly between turns of cattle. Cattle that had infections in the previous use of that pen will leave billions of Treponema bacteria in the soil and manure and will give a larger infective dose quicker to incoming calves. Making sure pens are extremely clean, especially around water tanks and feed aprons, is a critical step to delaying the infection in incoming cattle. Pens need to be as clean as possible. Low areas in the pen that hold rain water, urine and manure need to be eliminated. Pens should drain well, as this too is a large risk factor for new infections. Regularly inspect hind feet for signs of digital dermatitis in pen walks. Digital dermatitis can be seen in the heels of the front feet as well, but it is much more common in the rear feet. Identify M2 lesions early and treat promptly. One of the most important aspects of managing the disease is that as soon as the first clinical case occurs in a pen, ALL the animals in that pen need to be moved through a foot bath for three consecutive days, making certain not to skip a day. This condition is seen less in dry lots that are well drained and open to sunshine and drying; it is much more common in barns, slatted floor barns and free stalls in dairy cattle. As days on feed and calf weights increase, we may have to make a decision to clean pens out in the middle of a feeding period. As impractical as this may sound, we can not allow this condition to break out clinically in 1,600- and 1,800-pound calves, as many times these animals will go down and be unable to rise due to the significant pain seen in these animals. U.S. Department of Agriculture rules prohibiting the slaughter of down cattle means that we have to manage pens and the infectious condition so we donʼt have down cattle late in the feeding program. Nutrition Higher levels of zinc and the inclusion of performance trace minerals like the Availa-Plus Formula in beef cattle nutrition can help prevent digital dermatitis. Zinc helps the condition in several ways. First, it improves the ability of certain white blood cells like neutrophils and macrophages to fight the infection and kill the bacteria. Second, zinc plays a significant role in making skin healthier and thicker, which makes it more difficult for the infectious organism to burrow deeper into the skin and set up an infection. Zinc plays a significant role in making very specific proteins between skin cells that helps to prevent the infection from starting. Unfortunately, the animals may be exposed to a large dose of the infective agent before they are able to make better skin. It is a race against time in some instances. Several studies have evaluated the differences between cattle fed a novel nutritional supplement that included Zinpro Performance Minerals (zinc, manganese, copper) and iodine to a supplement that had a similar profile from predominantly inorganic trace mineral sources (zinc, manganese, copper), which also included iodine. In one study, cattle fed performance trace minerals had an average increase in total final weight gain of 17.6 pounds and a calculated average increase in hot carcass weight of 26 pounds per animal compared to the animals fed an inorganic DISCOVERY RESEARCHER – BEEF, ZINPRO
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