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.