Mastitis or udder inflammation is the number one disease in cows that leads to economic damage in the form of reduced yields and premature culling of chronically ill cows. That’s why doing your best to avoid it is a priority in all dairy farms.
When your cows are happier and healthier, there’s better milk and more of it. Not to mention, your cows live a full life, making you a healthy profit. Here’s our guide to preventing mastitis in dairy cows for happier dairy farms.
1. What is Mastitis?
Mastitis is the infection of the teat canal or udder tissues of a cow. It’s caused when bacteria finds its way inside the teat canal and is allowed to fester. The infected area becomes inflamed and red. The milk becomes watery or filled with blood and pus.
There can be many causes, such as soiling of the udders, unhygienic conditions, or exposure to another cow with mastitis.
2. Symptoms of Mastitis
Here are some symptoms of mastitis that you can keep an eye out for:
- Increased body temperature
- Redness or swelling of the udders
- Low-quality watery milk
- Blood or pus in the milk
- Sunken eyes
3. How to Prevent Mastitis in Cows
Preventing mastitis is essential for any profitable dairy farm, as prevention is more effective than curing the disease. Here are a few ways you can avoid this disease from causing you any trouble at your dairy farm.
1. Using Antibiotics
Using special cow antibiotics like quartermaster medicine for cows is an effective way to prevent the bacteria from causing the sickness. Once any bacteria enters the body of the cow, it will be killed or not allowed to grow, preventing the illness, even in dry cows.
The use of antibiotics needs a veteran’s discretion, and you cannot buy this stuff over the counter for your cows. So contact a vet as soon as you see any signs of the disease in the cows or the milk.
2. Keep the Housing and Bedding Clean
If the housing or bedding conditions for your cows, wet or dry, are not to standard, then there’s a significant chance that dangerous bacteria could proliferate and grow in the bedding or the cow’s living quarters.
These bacteria can make their way to the udders as the cows rest or move around, infecting them. Keeping everything clean and changing bedding often is a good way to ensure that no bacteria build up in the first place to infect your cows.
3. Cleaning Milking Equipment
Milking equipment makes direct contact with the udder tissue. It also handles the milk that is about to be sold commercially or used to make another food product. This equipment should be kept clean for obvious reasons. If it is not clean enough, it could cause an infection.
It’s very disheartening when negligently kept milking equipment causes an infection in a cow that would have otherwise remained healthy since the rest of the farm was clean and well-kept.
4. Culling and Quarantine
This disease can spread from cow to cow. So once you have noticed one of the cows has gotten sick, you should quarantine it from the rest until the infection has completely cleared. That’s the best you can do before reintroducing it into the herd.
Sometimes, the animal becomes chronically infected, and no matter how much you treat it, it gets infected again and again. Such cows, unfortunately, have to be culled from the herd. Culling a cow can be a hard decision, so call an emergency vet clinic for advice and assistance.