Farm Director KC Sheperd caught up with OSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist Dr. Rosslyn Biggs to discuss the upcoming Oklahoma Youth Expo (OYE) and the biosecurity measures involved with it.
According to Dr. Biggs, the time to begin is now as exhibitors prepare for local and county shows. Animal owners should be checking their equipment, making sure their animals are properly vaccinated, planning medications and first-aid supplies to take to the shows, and obtaining certificates of veterinary inspection or health certificates.
“There is a purpose to those health certificates,” Dr. Biggs explained. “We want an inspection on that day to confirm that that animal is showing no signs of illness or communicable disease because it is not only our animals at stake. It is everybody at the show and potentially our entire Oklahoma herd.”
To speed up the check-in process at the show, Dr. Biggs advised exhibitors to double-check their health certificates to ensure that the animals being shown are the animals that were inspected and indicated on the certificate. Additionally, hog exhibitors need to be sure that their hogs received both their pseudorabies and brucellosis vaccines. Sheep and goat exhibitors need to be sure their scrapie tags are in place.
“We want to be prepared. Let’s talk to our veterinarian and our ag ed instructors,” Dr. Biggs advised. “What happens if we lose a tag? Inevitably, somebody is going to lose a tag, so be ready for that. Hopefully, if we talk about it in advance, we won’t have to worry, but be ready to pull up to that inspection, and have your paperwork in hand – maybe have an extra set of papers. The thing that I like to see if I have to check those is it makes it really tough if we have one animal on the trailer, but the certificate has been written for fifty animals. It’s helpful if you use a highlighter to highlight that one animal. It will really speed up the process.”
The OYE team is well-prepared for the volume and variety of animals that will be present and they try to prepare ahead of time for everything that they can. Despite everyone’s best efforts, sometimes a communicable disease can present itself at the show, and such an event has to be reported.
Dr. Biggs advised exhibitors to be cognizant of the health of other animals as well as their own and report any that may be sick to show officials to safeguard the health of all of them.
Inevitably an exhibitor or his or her animals will present illness shortly before the show, and while Dr. Biggs readily commiserated with those who experience that situation, she advised them to stay home. “We want to keep ourselves well. We want to keep our animals well and do everything we can to keep those biosecurity practices in place to ensure that we are taking healthy animals back home.”
With the growing number of shows implementing broiler shows into their venues, Dr. Biggs warned specifically of the presence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in a couple of commercial flocks in Oklahoma.
“If you are showing poultry, we want to be really dedicated to biosecurity measures,” she said. “Look for resources on OSU Extension’s and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture’s pages, as well as USDA’s on biosecurity measures for, really all species, but particularly our poultry owners. We don’t want them spreading something while they are there or taking it back home with them.”
She also advised show managers to look up these practices and do their best to implement them at their events.
Sheperd and Dr. Biggs went on to discuss what producers need to be aware of with the implementation of E.I.D. tag mandates last November. Click the listen bar at the top of the page to listen to the complete audio.
