Even with good feed management, bunk space competition impacts how prone your herd is to liver abscesses. High-concentrate feedings, which most all feedyards are pushing, definitely impacts the severity and incidence of liver abscesses. Fresh or na ve cattle coming off ranches that have not been exposed to that type of a bacteria contamination in their environment are especially susceptible. The research I did consisted of using Tylan-fed cattle as our controls. We wanted to make sure the data we had was not confounded strictly by feedlot or packing plant.
Some feedlots have a worse problem with abscesses than others.
Likewise, some packing plants tend to identify and score livers a little harder than others. So we used multiple feedyards and six different packing plants in the study. We placed ranch-origin cattle in commingled pens of vaccinated and unvaccinated animals. All animals were fed Tylan at the highest label rate during the trial. These test cattle have been on consistent feedlot diets varying between 105 days on feed up to 188 days on feed.