Mastitis and high SCC can result in significant losses on farm.
The main losses are
- Production losses
- Penalties
- Lost bonuses
- Discarded milk
- Culling
- Treatment costs
For every 100,000 increase in SCC above 200,000, there will be a reduction in yield of 2.5%, significantly reducing your profit.
Our work on mastitis can be divided into 4 areas,
1. Individual clinical cases of mastitis – intensive care and prompt treatment of clinincal cases is available 24 hours a day.
2. Investigation of rising SCC / increasing number of clinical mastitis cases – these problems can indicate that a wider herd problem is present. There can be many causes of this, and a thorough investigation will be needed to identify and rectify the cause of the problem. We have the skills and expertise to do this, using cellcheck guidelines and training as well as our many years of experience.
3. Analysis of milk recording data – We also offer a service where we analyse your milk recording data for patterns and changes in SCC and nutritional markers which will affect production. Used in conjunction with on-farm visits to discuss the herd management and environment, it can be a powerful tool in increasing profitability.
We will routinely discuss these results with you and make recommendations to maximise the health and production potential of your herd.
4. Bacterial culture and antibiotic sensitivity – we do this to guide and advise you as to the best choice of antibiotics for both treating clinical cases and choice of dry-cow tube.
We advise taking samples from all clinical cases before treating and putting them in the freezer if not requesting culture. This gives you a bank of samples to culture if problems occur later and may help with any investigation of a mastitis/ SCC problem that might arise in the future.
Culture and sensitivity is also useful prior to drying off cows as a guide as to the most useful tube to use on your herd. Samples can be taken from the bulk tank or preferably from cows with high SCC of recent origin.
Samples from cows with and SCC between 500,000 and 100,000 are the most useful as they are the most likely to be typical of what is currently affecting your herd.
