Mastitis

Mastitis

1. 5 point milk plan

   • early detection and prompt treatment
   • Post milk teat dipping
   • use of dry cow antibiotic therapy
   • culling cows with more than 3 cases in one lactation
   • good maintenance of milking machines

2. Different ways to classify it

   • Clinical
     • noticeable change in milk/udder
   • Sub-clinical,
     • inflammation which does not cause change
   • Environmental
     • Strep uberis
       • Spread easily in milking
       • gram +
     • E. coli
       • associated with sever toxic mastitis
       • gram -
     • Klebsiella
       • gram -
   • contagious
     • during milk process bacteria is spread from one udder to another
     • Staphylococcus aureus
     • Streptococcus agalactiae
     • Mycoplasma mastitis
       • very serious
         • cull fast
     • Corynebacterium bovis
   • skin flora opportunists
     • Coagulase negative Staph
     • may have a protective function

3. how to improve

   • accurate records
     • either incidence, cases in one year
       • will ignore subclinical cases if never detected
     • or prevalence look at SCC on one day
       • SCC shouldn't include the subclinical cases
     • look at tubes sold to farm
   • show farms how they compare to neighbours
   • look at the farm itself , clean? organised?
   • Targets
     • less than 30 cases/100 cows/year
     • SCC <200,000, nice target is 150,000
     • bactoscan legal limit 50,000
       • target is 20,000
     • protein 3.5%
     • 3.5-4.2%
   • wear gloves!
   • wipe teats!
   • freeze milk!
   • CMT= California Milk Test
     • look for any glopes and viscosity