Why is this important?

• Too many clinical cases are costly to the farm business, and disrupt milking.
• High numbers of clinical cases may indicate problems with:
• Preventing mastitis before calving
• Preventing mastitis in lactation
• Missing cases in the colostrum period
• Treating cases that did not meet the definition of a case requiring treatment.

You have a problem with clinical mastitis if:

• More than 15 cases/100 cows treated annually - see Industry benchmarks
• Your herd is performing above trigger on Mastitis Focus Report i.e.
• Above 8 cases/100 cows calved for monthly clinical case rate at calving
• Above 16 cases/100 first calvers calved for first calver clinical case rate
• Above 1 case/100 cows in milk for monthly clinical case rate in lactation (all cows)

Your options include:

• Work out value of reducing clinical mastitis. Go to SmartSAMM Gap Calculator.
• Work out when clinical mastitis is affecting your herd. See your Mastitis Focus Report for key areas to focus on.
• Review prevention systems. See:
• Healthy Udder - Prevent 1 for tips on milking techniques
• Healthy Udder - Prevent 2 for tips on teat spray technique
• Guideline 1 to reduce environmental mastitis
• Guideline 2 to reduce heifer mastitis
• Guideline 5 to reduce contagious mastitis
• Review detection systems. Poor detection in colostrum period may mean too many clinical cases in milking herd. See:
• Guideline 4.2 to improve detection in newly calved cows
• Review treatment systems. Make sure that cows to be treated meet the definition of a clinical case. See definition in:
• Healthy Udder - Find 1 and
• Guideline 4.2.
• Get help - a second pair of eyes (vet, milk quality advisor) can help spot problems with your systems. Go to:
• Accredited vets
• Your dairy company milk quality advisors
• Milk quality consultants: AsureQuality and QCONZ.