Thomaston, GA |
With the U.S. cattle inventory now at a seventy-five-year low, the industry has little margin for disruption. That’s why the recent detection of New World Screwworms in the southwest is raising serious concerns among cattlemen across the country. The last major outbreak — more than six decades ago — caused losses of as much as ten percent for producers. With calves being especially susceptible to the pest, Georgia cattlemen are keeping a close eye on their herds as spring calving season winds down.
“Getting towards the end of spring calving season, most of our cattlemen around here are seeing their cows every day — and we just need to continue to do that,” said Danny Bentley, an Upson County cattleman. “Once all these calves are born and on the ground, we have to be vigilant. We have to be good stewards. We’re looking for open wounds, navels on newborn calves. When we tag and band these calves — we band them now, we don’t cut them anymore — we try to do it in the first two days of birth so we can see the calf from one end to the other. We’re looking at those weak areas like the navel and the rear end, and checking for things like barbed wire cuts on cows to make sure there’s no infection, no worms.”
If anything unusual is found, Bentley says getting it reported as quickly as possible is the top priority — starting with a trusted local veterinarian and then moving up the chain to state officials.
“We’d call our local veterinarian first — we have a good relationship with our local vets,” Bentley said. “And then obviously the next call would be to our state veterinarian through the Georgia Department of Agriculture, because they would need to know as well. Right now, this is strictly an animal situation. There’s no harm that could come to any resident of Georgia. Meat is still safe. We’ve got the safest meat in the world.”
Bentley brings a unique perspective to the issue — he saw firsthand what the screwworm could do the first time around. While the Southeast was less severely impacted than other parts of the country, it wasn’t spared entirely.
“With the animal, you clean those things out. I don’t remember all the specifics, but you sprayed them and doctored on them real well,” Bentley recalled. “With the technology we have today it might be different, but as I recall, the sterile male fly program was what got rid of them — and that’s what made the difference.”
As for the overall concern level for Georgia producers, Bentley says the state is somewhat insulated from the worst-case scenarios — largely because Georgia is a significant net exporter of beef cattle rather than a finishing state.
“So much of ours is going out. We’ve got twenty, twenty-one stockyards in Georgia, and with all the private sales, most of that cattle is leaving the state. We don’t have feed lots here — maybe one,” Bentley said. “So yeah, we’re not as pressed on that side as a lot of producers in other states are.”
Still, with the national herd at historic lows and the screwworm making its presence known again, Georgia cattlemen aren’t taking any chances. Vigilance, Bentley says, is the best tool they have.