The expansion of the national dairy herd has seen a rise in mastitis outbreaks in low cell count herds, writes

WHEN we speak about mastitis, we automatically think of high somatic cell count cows and elevated bulk tank SCC.

This type of scenario is often associated with the Staph aureus bacterium that causes an infection that lies out of sight in the udder resulting in a high cell count but no visible clots.

As Bulk SCC improves the incidence of this contagious mastitis Staph aureus reduces as infection rate drops.

After this busy spring, we are seeing in certain co-ops over 70pc of suppliers with BULK SCC of 200,000.

This is an excellent achievement when you consider the expansion occurring in the national herd.

Yet recently I received a call seeking urgent help to deal with an outbreak of mastitis in a low SCC herd — it stood out as this herd was consistently under 100,000 SCC.

With this drop in SCC other challenges can raise their head, one type of mastitis which is becoming more prevalent in spring calving herds is Strep uberus mastitis that doesn’t result in elevated SCC.

It now accounts for more than half the callouts that I’m doing to farms with urgent problems. As the cell count in herds improves, you’d expect that this wouldn’t happen.

However, this bug is now getting more dominant and as herds improve this is the type THE automatic cluster removers were corrected to proper flow rates, a delay time of three seconds between cut off of vacuum and engagement of string was enacted. The operating vacuum was dropped to 47kpa and cows were locked off cubicles pre and post milking during the grazing season.

Cluster dipping in a peracetic acid solution was started for a period of two weeks, solution was changed after every 10 dips, this was to help stop spread of infection.

A barrier dip was used post milking for a month until infection came under control. At drying off an internal teat sealer will be