Reducing the Use of Antibiotics to Treat Diarrhea in Calves

On dairy farms, one of the main uses of antimicrobials is to treat calves for diarrhea and prevent fatal bacteremia. Researchers are proposing a new multifactorial approach to reduce and refine this irresponsible use without compromising animal health and animal welfare.   During the neonatal period, calves are particularly prone to diarrhea. To address this, farmers often use antibiotics, regardless of whether the condition is bacterial or caused by another factor. This is even one of the main reasons for antibiotic use on dairy farms. The goal is to prevent or treat potential bacteremia, a life-threatening bloodborne infection that occurs in approximately 30% of calves with diarrhea. Delayed or failed treatment with antibiotics can indeed have a negative impact on the calves’ health and well-being. However, while this approach is effective, it is not always medically justified. Researchers aim to reduce and refine the routine use of antibiotics in the management of calves with diarrhea, without compromising their health or farm productivity. To this end, they propose improving care and treatment through algorithms that would enable the implementation of a rational action plan. However, to effectively change farming practices, effective communication and collaboration between farmers and veterinarians are essential. The researchers therefore recommended implementing multifactorial measures to adhere to a protocol that uses fewer antibiotics. In addition to this new algorithm, which enables better antibiotic management, they are also training farmers to assess calf health with the goal of making disease management and prevention practices more effective. Monthly visits also made it possible to conduct audits and verify compliance with the new measures. Thanks to this multidisciplinary approach, the researchers observed improvements in disease detection and colostrum management on the farms. Combined with the algorithms, these changes led to a significant reduction in the number of calves treated with antimicrobials for diarrhea and, consequently, in the total volume of antibiotics used on the monitored farms. This reduction in antibiotic therapy had no effect on the incidence of diarrhea or on animal mortality. The proposed new measures therefore proved effective, with no identifiable negative impact on animal health or animal welfare. These new practices could serve as a new strategy for promoting responsible use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine and thereby further limit antimicrobial resistance.