Glacier FarmMedia – When Anthony Bond processes cattle at his operation near Elgin, Man., the calves get their usual vaccinations, but they now also get a dab of pheromone on the back, the poll on their head and just above their nose.
The pheromone, sold under the brand name FerAppease, is being used to manage stress during particularly trying times for cattle.
The product is marketed as a maternal bovine appeasing substance. More simply put: cattle are calmed by the smell of Mom.
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“What I’ve seen is the cattle seem to be calmer, seem to be quieter,” says Bond, known to most as Zippy.
Bond started using FerAppease at his 007 Livestock Feeders Ltd. in the fall.
“We give it on arrival to all of our new calves we buy,” he says.
He says the calves don’t seem to bawl as much and they get started on feed quicker.
He’s also seeing fewer sick cattle this year but isn’t prepared to link that to the pheromone treatment yet.
The use of FerAppease has spread quickly across North America in various circumstances where cattle could be stressed. That includes fitting for shows, castration, branding, any sort of treatment and processing, transportation and weaning.
Research published in the Journal of Animal Science in September 2024, conducted by Texas A&M University, shows benefits to treating high-risk cattle as they arrive at a feedlot, including lower serum and hair cortisol levels and higher live weight gain, compared to a control group.
Clayton Zanin Pereira, international sales director with FerAppease, said at last year’s Canadian Western Agribition in Regina that FerAppease is a synthetic pheromone that is an analogue of the pheromone produced by the udders of cows.
Stress in livestock results in elevated cortisol levels, and FerAppease says it helps to lower those levels.
“Every time you have a high stress, the cortisol levels go up because the animal needs to be prepared. They call it the fight and flight mode,” says Zanin Pereira.
That overwhelms all other bodily systems, he adds.
“They don’t care about the reproduction or feed or disease because they’re more worried about survival.”
Cortisol and adrenaline result in more glycogen in the muscle of the animal. Reduce the cortisol and the animals will stay in a more normal state and therefore eat better and could conceivably better fight disease, Zanin Pereira says.
Calmer cattle mean more effective vaccines, allowing the calf’s immune system to concentrate on one challenge versus trying to respond to the vaccine while also dealing with a flight or fight response. Antibody production can increase 20 per cent, says Zanin Pereira.
The product is available from veterinarians and farm supply outlets and doesn’t require a prescription.
Five millilitres are applied above the muzzle where the vomeronasal organ will absorb the scent. Another five ml goes behind the poll because the sebaceous glands will absorb the product and help it stay active for 14 days.
The company conducts research with Reinald Fernandes Cooke of Texas A&M University, who has found that average daily gain increased 15 to 20 per cent after weaning for calves that received the FerAppease analogue, across four studies that he ran.
The product is made by FERA Diagnostics and Biologicals, which was started in 2014 by Dr. Rodrigo Bicalho with mastitis diagnosis products. It has since developed other diagnostic products for livestock.
Pheromone misters and collars have been available for cats for years, but it was about eight years ago that the bovine pheromone was replicated in a laboratory, which made commercial production possible.
“The idea of a calming sort of pheromone really made sense to me,” said Jay Jackson, a Winnipeg-based cattle buyer and seller who also owns cattle, which are custom grazed or fed.
He heard about FerAppease from Corbitt Wall, who produces the Feeder Flash commentary on YouTube and reached out to his veterinarian to get some.
He’s used it mostly to treat 400-pound calves he buys at sale barns that are “under a lot of stress.”
“It’s a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I used it, and I think it helped,” he says.
The cost of the product versus the rising value of beef cattle also makes it cheap insurance. At $4 per head on an animal that’s worth $2,500, it makes sense, he adds.
He also treated the sale barn cattle after a winter of feeding when they were put out on grass at 800 lb.
The farmer feeding those cattle saw a remarkable difference in the behaviour compared to previous years, Jackson says.
“Getting those animals settled, if you can do anything for them to do it, is a huge advantage,” he adds.
The product is being used by dairy farmers as well, especially for heifers as they learn to use milking systems for the first time. The product has no meat or milk withholding times.
The company also has a swine version of FerAppease.
