Sometimes two research studies will ask a similar question and get different results. That doesn’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong, or that it’s a coin toss, or that research is pointless – it just means that details and context are important. If we want to know whether a particular management practice helps prevent scours in beef calves, large-scale studies that measure signs of scours, treatment and recovery rates in beef calves are more helpful than studies that compare rectal temperatures or white blood cell numbers in a few dairy calves.
This is where “systematic reviews” are helpful. A systematic review clearly defines what kind of existing studies will help answer a specific question. Then it finds all the published studies that meet those criteria, reviews them, and identifies what they all agree on. Systematic reviews are extremely helpful when trying to make recommendations to real-life producers.
Claire Windeyer and a team of veterinary researchers from the Universities of Calgary and Saskatchewan recently published a systematic review of management practices related to preweaning death loss in beef calves (doi.org/10.1017/S1466252325000015). Then they convened a panel of 12 veterinary experts to identify and prioritize a large variety of management practices that would provide the greatest benefit for the most cow-calf producers (doi.org/10.3390/vetsci11100453).