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How do you treat your beer?

by Clint Peck

Try leaving your beer sitting in your truck in the hot sun for a few hours before consuming it. Likely, even after it’s cooled down the beer’s already gone “skunky.” Your friends are mad at you and you’ll have to make another trip to town to get more refreshments.

Same thing can happen with livestock vaccines. We can completely destroy a vaccine by storing and handling it poorly. It might look okay, and we might have administered it properly and think it’s doing a good job. But, we may very well have just wasted our money and done little or nothing to protect our herd from disease.

Vaccines are fragile. They need to be treated with great care. First thing is to look for the expiration date. Like the “born-on” date of a beer, it tells us how fresh it is. If the date on your vaccine is expired, don’t use it.

Modified-live vaccines (MLVs) are especially fragile. They depend on actually being active and growing to work. The problem is, once they’re mixed MLVs are active for only a couple of hours, if refrigerated. If left to get warm their effective life is much, much shorter.

Okay, so we get our vaccines from the vet clinic or the farm supply store to the branding corral or processing chute without letting them get warm. Take a look at the coolers? How many times have you seen the beer kept in the best cooler? Bottles covered up to the neck with ice, ready for the work to be finished.

Then look for the ice chest for the vaccines. Is it the old one that’s cracked, with a lid that doesn’t quite snap closed? Is there ice or ice packs in it? This might tell us about our priorities.

So, let’s say someone has bought a new cooler filed with ice and has the vaccines stored correctly. Now we’re ready to administer them. For the toxoids or bacterin vaccine types, (killed, comes ready to use) they go into a clean syringe to be used as directed. For the MLVs, we have to hydrate them before use.

Either way, do we open all our beers at once, set them out on the tailgate, in the sun, and drink them one by one while they get warm and flat? Nope. Most of us keep our beer in the cooler for as long as possible – taking them out one at a time.

You might save a little time by mixing ahead; but any advantage will be more than lost by the deterioration of the vaccine. The point again – treat your vaccine like your beer and the quality of what you do will go way up.

Now look around at who’s handling the vaccines. Are they old enough and experienced in handling vaccines and administering them properly? Most of us wouldn’t let our eight-year old grandkids walk around with a beer.

Thank goodness, unlike state laws governing drinking ages, we don’t have laws governing who can give a shot to a cow. Therefore, it’s up to the discretion of the livestock manager to determine who’s able to prudently, safely and effectively administer the products.

Finally, it’s the end of the day when we’re actually ready for our beer. Do we have leftover vaccine? We wouldn’t save a half bottle of beer until next week.

The same holds true for vaccine. Dispose of the leftover vaccines promptly and properly.

Bottom line: Take care of your vaccines like you take care of your beer. ©

The author is director of Beef Quality Assurance, Montana State University. Inspired by comments from the “Back End of a Squeeze Chute” by Herbert M "Tim" Richards III, DVM, Kahua Ranch Ltd., Kamuela, Hawaii.