This article can truly be the udder side of the story. Our topic is mastitis. Mastitis is defined as inflammation and/or infection of the mammary glands. This can be caused by trauma, bacteria, yeast or fungus or viral. The most common is bacteria, which is what we will concentrate on here.
Most people just want a tube of mastitis treatment to treat mastitis and be done with it. I wish it would work that way, but it doesn’t. We first need to know what bacterium is causing the infection. The only sure way to know that is by running a culture and tests. I can guess, but guessing is guessing. When we shotgun treatments we run the chance of creating resistant bacteria. This is exactly what the big wigs in Washington and all of the consumers are screaming about. And as you get more and more resistant bacteria on your farm, the harder and harder it is to get the bacteria under control.
A simple classification of mastitis is environmental and contagious. Environmental cases are like E. coli while contagious is more to the bug Staph aureous. Environmental will also contain the Strep’s and most any acute infection. Contagious is a long term infection that just raises your somatic cell count and/or your bacteria count in the milk. The environmental group normally causes an infection and also makes the animal sick. This one we know about right away. I have also seen E. coli kill a cow within 24 hours. This is why we call this either Acute mastitis or Toxic mastitis, The Cow Killer. These infections require immediate attention and treatment. I normally treat these infections with supportive care and very little antibiotics. And since I have started this, my survival rate has increased. The goal is to flush out the toxins and bacteria.
Now in dealing with the contagious side of mastitis, this is not known as a cow killer, but a dairyman killer. This is the bacteria that go from cow to cow. It will silently infect your whole herd. The only way you will know about it is on your reports from either the milk company or DHIA. You will see a rise in bacteria count or somatic cells in your milk. I have dealt with many dairymen that have had this mastitis problem. The reason I call it a dairyman killer is that it can put a dairyman out of the business, and has. Once your somatic cells for the herd get above 700,000, the milk company cannot use your milk to drink. It has to go to cheese or they do not even want it. When the milk company does not want your milk, you are out of the business. Hence, the term dairyman killer!
To treat this infection we have to break the cycle and limit the infection rate. This is done by changing milking procedures, loafing areas and eliminating the contamination of the contagion. Since, most of this infection is caused by a Staph sp. and we know that all Staph can become resistant to every antibiotic we have, we can only treat by culture and sensitivity. Then we know what antibiotic we work. Now it is very hard to treat Staph while a cow is milking. My cure rate for treatment during lactation is only around about 20-25 percent. But, I run around 80 percent cure rate at dry off. This is because Staph will get a lot worse during the dry period and can totally destroy an udder. I have also used vaccines, one commercially available and others were autogenous, which were made specifically for that farm. The commercially available vaccine will only treat one form of Staph. There are many other forms out there. Including MRSA, which is Methicillin Resistant Staph, which is the big one we have all heard about from human infection. This is the main one the human side is worried about with resistance.
Some rules I like to think of in this case are:
• “Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should!”
• “Treatment should get in and get out, while being appropriate!”
• “Above all, do no harm!”
Dr. Tim E. O’Neill, DVM, owns Country Veterinary Service in Farmington, Ark.
