Successfully Tackling Mastitis is a Matter of Striking the Perfect Balance

Whereas 10 to 15 years ago when I graduated from University, on 9 out of 10 herd visits we conducted, we could achieve and maintain good udder health by implementing some straightforward measures such as wearing gloves during milking, pre-dipping, optimizing the milking routine, disinfecting milking clusters after having milked a cow with a high cell count or clinical mastitis, and increasing the cleaning frequency of cubicles. Nowadays, we are more often confronted with farms experiencing an outbreak of clinical mastitis or a worrying high bulk milk somatic cell count, although the farms are generally well managed.

Preventing and tackling mastitis on a dairy farm is no longer just a matter of lowering the infection pressure on the farm, but rather of striking the perfect balance between the infection pressure the cows are exposed to and the immunity of the cows.

What You Will Learn

• The basic pathogenesis of bovine mastitis.
• The importance of the cow’s immunity in preventing and tackling mastitis.
• How to optimize the immunity of cows from science into practice.