Mastitis & Milk Quality

Tackle Mastitis With TotalVet

We can import cell count and clinical mastitis information from your milk records into TotalVet to monitor infection patterns, and many of our dairy clients use this service on a regular basis. Frequent monitoring allows us to highlight areas of good performance, and to detect and respond to any problems before they get out of control.

We do all our own mastitis bacteriology in our lab, which means we have a quick turn-around of culture results. As well as finding out which pathogens are causing problems, we will advise you on how best to treat infections.

Mastitis Control Plan

We have several vets trained to deliver the AHDB Mastitis Control Plan. Whether your farm has clinical mastitis problems, high cell counts or you just want to ensure your cows’ udder health is as good as possible, the Plan offers a holistic approach to mastitis and cell count control.

Analysis of cell count and mastitis records is followed by a farm visit, which includes a housing assessment and a milking visit to look at teat condition and the milking routine. A tailor-made mastitis control plan is drawn up to target the specific mastitis pattern on your farm, and ongoing monitoring allows improvement to be measured.

This TotalVet graph shows the percentage of cows over 30 days in milk that are becoming infected each month, as measured by cell count.

This herd has a rising incidence of new infections over the summer but performs well in winter.

This is a common scenario and can often be addressed by summer pasture rotation and management of paddocks, tracks, gateways and areas around water troughs to reduce poaching.

This graph shows the clinical cases from the same herd over the same time period.

The incidence of clinical mastitis is generally low, but many of the cases that do occur originate from the dry period.

A review of dry cow accommodation, drying off technique and dry period/calving management would be useful.

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