Common Sense

The whole secret to keeping your livestock healthy and your production cost down is to doctor the animal at the first sign of sickness.  I would prefer doctoring two head that might have gotten better on their own as to miss one that really needed it.  When they’re dead, that pink slip can really impact your bottom line.  If I see a calf that is lying down while the rest of the herd is up grazing, I make it stand up.  If that animal doesn’t stretch after getting to its hooves, it might get a shot.  If I don’t like the posture of a calf that is standing with its head out and down, it gets a shot.  If one comes up slow and its ear or ears are down a little bit, it gets a shot.  If one is breathing hard and has a little foam at the mouth, it definitely gets a shot.  If one doesn’t look bright eyed, and has that “I don’t care” look, it gets a shot.  If you have any doubt get the gun out.   Some of cattlemen’s worst case scenarios are chronics; those cattle that won’t live but they won’t die.  You know what I’m talking about; cattle that you medicate and save, but six months later still looks like it did the day you purchased it, or worse!  Chronics can be greatly reduced or eliminated by treating them as soon as possible in a pasture setting without them undergoing the stress of being chased and run through the squeeze chute.

Before I started using a reliable remote injection method, I would be out on the horse and know an animal needed a shot.  By the time I sorted him off the herd, ran him to the pens and then through the chute, he damn sure needed a shot!  The same holds true for roping and using a hand syringe out of the saddle bag.  It’s all about stress on the animal.  One shot with a Pneu-Dart out in the pasture with the proper drug in a timely fashion can save doctoring him every day for a week.

One problem I encountered years ago was animal identification.  I might have 80 head of black cattle looking like peas in a pod. Determining which animal had received an injection the day or days prior would be extremely difficult if not impossible even by the same day-to-day caretaker.  This problem was solved by attaching numbered ear tags as the cattle are initially processed. Accurate medical records can be kept containing information as to which animal got what drug and when.  This way, if I am away for a few days, the rest of the crew or whoever was looking after the cattle will know what is going on and I will know the changes upon return.  This eliminates medicating an animal with a “follow up” shot that turns out to be the wrong animal.  The records will also let you know if an animal is suffering a relapse a week after you initially treated it.  Should you have to eventually pen the animal and have the vet treat it, you can show him exactly what drugs have been used and the date they were administered.   Keeping records is not that hard, and can be an invaluable tool.  At the end of this chapter will be a picture of a chart I made and used.

I had a neighbor years ago that had expressed an interest in purchasing Pneu-Dart equipment, but thought it too expensive.  He had a herd turned out on a wheat pasture and encountered an outbreak of foot rot, which is easily cured with a prescribed drug.  While he was purchasing drugs at the vet clinic, he was griping about the cowboys running 25 pounds of weight off each calf in an attempt to isolate the infected cattle for treatment.  The vet’s assistant told him, “Well, 125 head @ 25 pounds per head equals 3,125 pounds.  At $95.00 CWT that’s only $2,968.75!”  He then asked the client why he had not bought a dart gun from Mark.  The neighbor did call me later the same day, as it didn’t take long for those figures to sink in.

Of course the above figures change with the markets, but regardless of whether the cattle are worth $25.00 per CWT or $125.00 per CWT, remote injection makes sense and is cost effective.

Folks, I like to cowboy as much as the next guy or gal.  I know its fun, but there’s the cowboy way and then there is the cattleman’s way.  Depending on the market, if one or two head are prevented from death or from becoming chronics, the equipment will have paid for itself.  Then you can take a look at the convenience and time saved.  If you have to doctor a critter far from facilities, by the time you lot it and spook the rest of the herd up, get a trailer, load it and drive to facilities, doctor on it and then haul it back to the pasture someday when it’s well, the cost of the dart looks pretty cheap to me.  To boot, you are not stressing the animal excessively.  I tend to stress out myself upon occasion; especially when a five minute job which could be accomplished with a dart gun turns into a half a days work by conventional methods.

You received a load of 125 head of stocker cattle the night before at 2 a.m. in the morning that had just undergone a twenty hour haul.  It is 1 p.m. the next day and the temperature is 102 degrees.  The cattle have eaten some hay and feed you put out before they arrived and they have all had a drink of water.  The cattle are resting beneath the shade trees in your lot.  You see three head that sure need a shot.  Common sense should tell you to dart the three head right where they are and leave the rest of the cattle alone.  By penning half the cattle into the sorting pens and running them around in the heat to isolate the three head, you will push who knows how many head to sickness by the stress you would invoke on them in the heat of the day.

As stated earlier in this writing, I’m still learning myself.  Much of the contents herein have been learned the hard way.  I hope this writing will help some people avoid mistakes I’ve encountered.  When you purchase your darting equipment, spend as much as you can afford towards the projector.  This is a one time investment, especially on the higher end models.  I see people attempting to use their old projectors designed to shoot the reusable type of darts to project disposable darts.  What they run into is there is limited power control on these projectors. Pneu-Dart darts weigh much less than the reusable kind and fly much faster.  This makes giving a proper injection difficult with an antiquated projector.  Over time, they figure out they would have been ahead to have just obtained the best equipment in the first place.  Usually in this type of scenario they eventually end up buying a projector designed for the disposable darts and keep the old projector for an emergency back up just in case the Pneu-Dart projector gets stolen or run over by a truck.

People will steal your dart gun.  In more than one such case I could not get the victims of such thefts new replacement rifles fast enough!  I guess it’s kind of like leaving your house without your cell phone in this day and age.  You feel somewhat lost without it.

Every once in a great while I’ll have someone ask me about a crossbow projector that is capable of twenty or thirty cc injections.  All I can tell them is that there are very few drugs out there that I know of that are labeled for more than 10cc per injection site; then I remind them what century we are in.  Putting all that aside, think of the impact trauma generated to the animal’s tissue that occurs if it is close enough to be hit by one of those things!  Common sense would dictate that it would not be a good idea to use a framing hammer to complete the finish work in your house.