For livestock producers, keeping animals healthy can make or break their business. But people have a lot of opinions and concerns these days about how they get the job done. So Harvest Public Media’s Jessica Naudziunas visited with beef and dairy farmers to ask how today’s scarlet A – antibiotics – fits into their healthy cow equation.

Chuck Massengill owns 50 head of cattle in California, Missouri. He raises the beef cows on rolling fields of green grass.

“What we’re looking at right now, is a group twenty five black cows, and there are eighteen white face calves, and they’ve all been born since September the 6th.”

They spend their lives under his care out on pasture, and they’re free to roam where they like. But, Massengill’s laissez faire herd management style ends when it comes to animal health.

“We vaccinate for production concerns and for life and death concerns.”

Vaccinations...
Read the full transcript