It’s no secret that as a dairy farmer, the most ongoing daily challenge you face is maintaining milk quality and quantity, which is directly related to a cow’s comfort in her environment. To effectively manage milk quality and boost production, it’s essential to ensure that cows are comfortable in their environment. Therefore, paying attention to proper udder care is crucial; neglecting it could jeopardise your farm’s profitability.
Managing Proper Udder Health Matters
Poor udder care puts your dairy at risk for contracting costly diseases and unstable milk production. Udder care should be a top priority for two reasons.
Mastitis is one of the most expensive health problems in the dairy industry and should therefore be the number one reason that you should prioritize udder health.
To demonstrate its impact on your bottom line, research shows that the average case of clinical mastitis costs $444 per cow, meaning it costs a dairy more than any other disease. Not to mention, it has a significant role in lost revenue because of lower milk production and amplified milking inefficiencies.
You are putting your dairy at risk if harmful bacteria are left behind due to insufficient germicidal effectiveness and improper cleaning. thereby causing a mastitis outbreak.
Teat health is the second most important reason to manage udder care. Higher milk quality is linked to healthy, well-maintained teats. Dry, cracked, or chapped teat skin can make a cow more susceptible to infections. Keeping the teat skin in good condition helps lower the risk of infection, enhances cow comfort, and increases profitability by ensuring more efficient milking.
Decision Tree to help you Prevent or Control Mastitis
We would like to help by providing you with a few questions to consider when evaluating udder health and care on your dairy. These questions fall into two categories—mastitis control and mastitis prevention—and are designed to help you determine if mastitis is affecting your herd and support you in identifying steps to take to improve udder health on your dairy.
If you find yourself battling lower milk production, milking inefficiencies, or seeing an increase of cows heading to hospital pens, it may indicate you are fighting mastitis and need to work to control it. Ask yourself the following questions to determine treatment plans.
1. Is my herd currently impacted by mastitis?
- If yes, is something in the herd’s environment making them more susceptible to contracting it?
- If no, be sure to review your current udder care protocol to ensure cows are protected, while also considering adjusting for potential future environment changes.
2. How many cows are in the hospital pen and why? What is the herd’s somatic cell count?
- According to the National Mastitis Council, it is ideal to have less than two percent of cases in the hospital pen classified as mastitis.
3. If you are seeing increased clinical cases, do you know which type of mastitis you’re fighting?
- Are you testing cows and treating them based on what the problem is, or are you generically treating with a blanket product?
- If you don’t know what you are fighting, it would be beneficial to take a sample from the bulk tank or hospital pen and test it to identify the proper treatment plan with your veterinarian.
- If you’ve identified the type of mastitis you’re fighting, review your udder care product protocol to ensure its effectiveness, evaluate your team’s product applicable procedures, and offer training when necessary.
Proper prevention of mastitis is the best way to reduce the risk of the costly effects of this disease. To determine if you are accurately preventing mastitis or just reacting to it, ponder these questions:
1. Are you trying to prevent mastitis correctly through udder care protocol plans designed specifically for your dairy and adjusted as situations change?
2. Are you routinely reviewing protocol compliance with employees and providing necessary training when needed?
3. How often do you review milking procedures or udder care protocols?
4. Are you using the right udder care product at the right time?
a. Using the right product at the right time to ensure maximum effectiveness while controlling cost is the key to a successful udder care protocol in your dairy.
5. Have you considered booking an udder care consultation with a specialist to look at the following factors your dairy?
a. Training and consultation milking procedures
i. Equipment testing
ii. Facility and environment review on farm
iii. Records analysis
iv. Barn and parlor audits
v. Bilingual milker training
vi. Cow flow
vii. Review the true cost of a case of mastitis
viii. Recommendations for situational rotation of products
ix. Set up teat dip application system
b. Hygiene and teat scoring
c. Teat and udder health
Most mastitis case flare ups on a dairy can be traced back to two root causes—lack of protocols and noncompliance. The key takeaway in this discussion is to protect yourself against this costly disease by uncovering potential problem areas and to identify where you can prevent new cases from occurring through training and proper udder care protocols. Are you taking all the right steps to prevent mastitis from impacting your bottom line?
Learn more about udder care health by reading our article originally published in Progressive Dairy.
Find out more about proper udder care and our range of Valiant products. Contact your local ABS consultant or complete the form below.
