Now of course, foetal protection is a bit of a thing right now in BVD marketing, and farmers can be forgiven for getting a bit confused. However, I think we can all agree that “we have never needed to protect a foetus growing inside a bull”! For this reason, there is almost universal agreement among the many vets I have visited that the extra value of vaccinating for IBR along with BVD protection provided by Hiprabovis® 3 makes it the obvious first choice for vaccinating bulls. There’s no concern about foetal protection, so it’s a “no-brainer”, they say.


Well, that got me thinking… surely the same logic applies to calves. Because… and I’m fairly confident about this… we have also never needed to protect a foetus growing inside a 4-month-old calf! However, it’s very apparent (see above) that calves need protection against IBR.


With practices about to get busy vaccinating calves for BVD, recommending Hiprabovis® 3—for the added security of IBR protection that it provides (just like the majority of you do for bulls)—makes more sense than getting hung up on the nuances of foetal protection claims that simply do not matter for these animals.
That’s not to say that Hiprabovis® 3 is out in the cold on foetal protection either, I might add. It is the only product that has been field-tested in NZ to demonstrate how well it performs protecting a foetus for the entire length of gestation. I’d love any opportunity to talk to you about this at some stage—for adult cows, where foetal protection is an important consideration—but it’s simply an irrelevant distraction for calves.

Hiprabovis® 3 is the gold standard calf vaccine.