Improving calf-side diagnosis of respiratory disease on UK dairy farms

Bovine respiratory disease complex (BRD) is a common and costly disease on UK dairy farms. Sensitivity and specificity of BRD diagnosis on some UK dairy farms is suboptimal, leading to lack of treatment of affected calves and sometimes inappropriate treatment of healthy calves. Various options are available for calf-side diagnosis of BRD. Unstructured observation of clinical signs is subjective and suffers from poor sensitivity and specificity. Clinical scoring systems such as the Wisconsin Calf Health Score and the California Calf Health Score offer an improvement in terms of diagnostic accuracy and repeatability. Thoracic ultrasonography is available through use of linear ultrasound units commonly carried by farm practitioners, and constitutes a simple, rapid, accurate and repeatable diagnostic test for BRD. Various systems for remote monitoring of body temperature are available, and allow early detection of BRD when used in combination with other diagnostic tests.