Health and Biosecurity Concerns to Improve Beef Cattle Reproduction

Maintaining the health of animals in a beef breeding herd is critical to insure optimum herd productivity since the major contributor to overall herd performance is the reproductive rate. Because of this level of importance, it is essential to carefully monitor all aspects of herd reproduction on a production year basis in order to monitor each year’s production and make good management decisions. Since reproduction is the basis of herd productivity, the effects of suboptimal health or disease is the primary cause of reduced performance. We should define “disease” as any deviation from normal in an individual animal. This includes non-infectious and infectious causes of disease. Physical injury, management or environmental stress, toxic agents or nutrient deficiencies alone or in combination with infectious agents can contribute to disease and, in turn, reduce reproductive performance. The risk of introducing infectious diseases into a herd can be reduced by following good management practices. The term “biosecurity” has recently been used to address the areas related to disease prevention, containment, and control within a herd.