The first weeks of lactation are among the most valuable times to collect mastitis data, yet recording easily slips down the list, vet Martha Twist of Friars Moor Livestock Health writes in advice for Farmers Weekly.
Mastitis problems fall into patterns, typically some mix of environmental, contagious, lactational and dry-period causes, and working out which matters on a given farm decides where effort should go. There is little point in changing pasture rotation if high cell counts appear only in winter housing, and better cubicle hygiene will not fix a fault in the milking machine. The patterns show up best in a farm's own data, season by season.
A dry-period case is a cow with either a high somatic cell count or a clinical case of mastitis within the first 30 days of lactation. A useful test of dry-period success is to compare a cow's cell count at the end of lactation with her count in those first 30 days; after 30 days it becomes harder to tell a persistent dry-period infection from a new lactation problem. Block-calving herds that do not record monthly should time their ad-hoc or quarterly recordings to fall when most cows are in their first month.
This summer's drought across the UK left many dry cows grazing very little grass, and concentrated grazing and dung build-up raise contamination around the udder. Twist's advice is to keep a sensible rotation even when grass is not growing, following the rule of grazing an area for at most two weeks followed by four weeks' rest. Cows housed early should get the full winter routine of regular scraping, clean bedding and frequent re-bedding, not a lighter "summer" system.
Once cows begin calving, the focus turns to teat preparation. The gold standard is "strip, dip, dry, apply": a pre-milking disinfectant in a dip cup with enough contact time to disinfect the teat skin fully, then thorough drying with paper towels. Variations can work, and farmers should ask their vet what suits their herd.
Photo: Cgoodwin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Source: Farmers Weekly
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