Friday, March 29, 2024

Four steps to better udder health

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Drying off offers a great opportunity for improving udder health by reducing cell counts and curing existing mastitis infections, in preparation for next season.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

A complete dry cow programme should encompass treating existing infections and preventing new ones.

Antibiotic dry cow treatment (DCT) and internal teat sealants (ITS) are valuable tools in the fight against mastitis. They work well to cure existing infections and prevent new infections over the dry period, with benefits felt long after calving has finished.

In some high-risk herds, a combination of the two (antibiotic DCT followed by ITS) might be recommended for some or all cows. As a first step decide your herd risk.

Review cow somatic cell count (SCC) data, clinical mastitis records and any culture results with your vet. Together assess the herd’s relative risk for environmental mastitis (bacteria from the environment) or contagious mastitis (bacteria spread cow-to-cow at milking).

Herds with a higher risk of environmental mastitis benefit from greater protection using ITS in the dry period. Herds with a higher risk of contagious mastitis benefit from treating chronic cases at dry-off using DCT; culling persistently-infected cows and preventing new cases in lactation by effective teat spraying.

Decide with your vet if all cows will be treated the same or differently. Cows considered likely infected or at risk of new infection should receive antibiotic DCT. Such cows include those with no herd test or treatment record, a previous history of clinical mastitis and/or one or more SCC counts more than 150,000 cells/mL (heifers more than 120,000 cells/ml).

For more information visit smartsamm.co.nz.

Think staff as well as cows

• Plan the day and people required.

• Make sure all operators have been adequately trained and are well supervised. Your vet practice might offer vet technicians to help with drying off large mobs or offer training for farm teams as part of the Healthy Udder Service. Find out if your practice offers Healthy Udder through smartsamm.co.nz.

• Roster on extra staff. Work on the basis that one person can comfortably clean and treat about 15-20 cows/hour, for a maximum of two hours. A spare person to mark cows, hold tails, provide spare tubes and keep track of cows being treated is also invaluable.

• Dry off manageable mobs. Spread the task over days or weeks to manage feed budgets and people.

• Choose dry days for drying off. Rain makes the job of cleaning teats much harder and increases the risk of severe cases of dry-period mastitis.

• Make sure strict hygiene is used to avoid introducing unwanted bacteria into the teat.

• Wear gloves – gloved hands are easier to keep clean.

• Completely disinfect the end of teats. Immediately before treatment, thoroughly clean each teat end with 70% meths or with a teat wipe. Clean two teats at a time then treat them, before moving onto the other two teats. Work on the back teats first, then the front. This helps keep track of which teats have been treated.

• Make sure tubes stay clean and dry before use. Do not warm tubes by putting them in buckets of warm water as this increases the chance of contamination.

• Avoid over-treating cows.

• Take only four tubes to each cow and use the same order to treat the quarters eg, left back, right back, left front, right front.

• If different treatments are being applied to different batches of cows, draft out and group the cows the day before, according to treatment approach.

• Apply mark, record, separate and treat. These steps can also be applied to DCT, after the cow’s last milking.

• Mark cows that are dried off early and receive DCT.

• Record details of all cows being treated.

• Separate out cows to be treated.

• Treat only after thorough disinfecting of the teat end and the rest of the milking herd is back in the paddock.

Jane Lacy-Hulbert is a DairyNZ senior scientist.

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