January's Dairy Nutrition Column: Mastitis and Nutrition - Discuss!

[EditorBob]

Below is an excerpt of January's column. Feel free to post comments and questions!

by John S. Hibma

I remember back when I was still a youngster on my parent’s dairy farm and learning how to milk cows, that one of the most important things to check for was if she had mastitis. There was always at least one cow in the herd of 200 that was “on the bucket.” In later years, when the dairy had grown to over 600 milk cows, treating a new case of it was nearly a daily occurrence, especially during the wet winters. Even later, when I was managing a large herd in Hawaii--again, in a particularly wet environment--there were times when 10 percent of the herd was being treated. It’s interesting to note that much effort has been put into controlling and lowering mastitis over the years. Still, infections in dairy cows have not decreased and mastitis continues to be the number one curse on milk quality.

Many of the mastitis problems I’ve had to deal with over the years were more directly related to the wet, muddy conditions that cows had to live in. For the most part, the infections were a direct result of pathogens coming from wet, unsanitary conditions--environmental pathogens. Contagious pathogens are a second type of mastitis-causing organisms; they easily spread from cow to cow, usually as the result of poor milking equipment and poor milking procedures. The proper management of clean housing, milking procedures and properly functioning milking equipment will all work towards preventing pathogens an entry to the udder.

Read the entire column at Farming: The Journal of Northeast Agriculture.

The author is a dairy nutritional consultant and works for Central Connecticut Farmer's Cooperative in Manchester, Conn.