Milking management and the prevention of mastitis

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Milking management and the prevention of mastitis

• Christina S. Petersson-Wolfe
• Dairy Extension Virginia Tech

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Outline

• Background about the bacteria
• NMC 10 Step Control Program
• What is it?
• New technology

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Significance of Mastitis
Background and Relevance

• Most costly disease to dairy producers
• (Degraves and Fetrow, 1991)
• Cost of treatment
• Milk with-holding time
• Increased labor costs
• Reduced milk production
• Premature culling
• Death
• Caused by wide range of bacterial pathogens

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Mastitis-causing pathogens
Background and Relevance

• Minor Pathogens
• Less severe effect on udder health
• Organisms include
• Corynebacterium bovis
• Coagulase negative Staphylococcus species
• Major Pathogens

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Mastitis-causing pathogens
Background and Relevance

• Major Pathogens
• Contagious pathogens
• Staphylococcus aureus
• Streptococcus agalactiae
• Environmental pathogens

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Mastitis-causing pathogens
Background and Relevance

• Major Pathogens
• Environmental pathogens
• Streptococcus species (other than Str.
  agalactiae)
• Gram-negative pathogens
• Coliform pathogens (E. coli, Klebsiella sp.,
  Enterobacter sp.)
• Serratia, Proteus and Pseudomonas species

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Relationship with SCC
Background and Relevance

• Bacterial infection somatic cell count
• Somatic cell count (SCC)
• milk production
• milk quality
• shelf life of milk products
• Economic impact on producer, processer and
  consumer
• How much SCC testing is done?

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What affects SCC?
Background and Relevance

• Cleanliness of environment
• Rate of chronic and contagious infections
• Milking time hygiene
• Milking preparation procedures
• Function of milking equipment
• Nutrition
• Stress

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About the bugs
Dairy Extension
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About the bugs
Dairy Extension
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About the bugs
Dairy Extension
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About the bugs
Dairy Extension
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Contagious
Dairy Extension

• Staph. aureus, Strep. dysgalactiae, Prototheca,
  C. bovis
• Milking time hygiene
• Segregation and/or culling
• S. aureus
• Prototheca

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Environmental
Dairy Extension

• Coliforms, Strep., dysgalactiae, Strep. uberis,
  environmental Streps
• Look at bedding, water sources, cooling ponds
• Use of
• Orbeseal
• Environmental Strep
• J5
• Coliforms

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Other
Dairy Extension

• Yeast, mold, Bacillus spp.
• Clean infusions

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NMC 10 Step Program
Background and Relevance

• 1. Establish goals for udder health
• 2. Clean, dry, comfortable environment
• 3. Proper milking procedures
• 4. Proper maintenance and use of equipment
• 5. Good record keeping

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NMC 10 Step Program
Background and Relevance

• 6. Management of clinical mastitis
• 7. Dry cow management
• 8. Maintenance of contagious bugs chronics
• 9. Regularly monitor udder health status
• 10. Review of control program

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1. Establish goals for udder health
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Set realistic targets
• Bulk tank somatic cell count
• Legal limits?
• Less than 400,000 cells/ml
• Rate of clinical mastitis
• Less than 3
• Review the goals regularly

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2. Clean, dry, comfortable environment
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Comfort
• Stress
• Immune system
• Susceptibility to mastitis

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2. Clean, dry, comfortable environment
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Bedding management
• Enough bedding
• Sand is best
• What types are common?
• Ensure bedded packs dry lots are DRY
• Housing for all animals is important not just
  milking animals

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2. Clean, dry, comfortable environment
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Cows remain standing after milking
• Ventilation
• Stocking density
• Heat abatement

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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Vacuum can damage teat end
• Goal - harvest as much milk as quickly and
  efficiently as possible
• Milk clean, dry, properly prepped teats

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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Milk clean, dry, properly prepped teats
• Gloves (clean gloves!)
• Pre-dip 30 s contact time (remove debris)
• Full coverage
• Iodine is best
• Strip cup examine for signs of mastitis
• Wipe Single use towels (cloth or paper)

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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Milk clean, dry, properly prepped teats
• Attach unit within 90 s of stripping
• Prevent squawks
• Avoid overmilking
• Post-dip
• Full coverage
• Iodine is best

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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program
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NMC 10 Step Control Program
30 s kill-time
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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program
90 s delay time
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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program
Oxytocin takes At least 60 to Reach a useful
concentration in the udder
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3. Proper milking procedures
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Signs of problems
• Teat end hyperkeratosis
• Rings at the base of the teats at unit removal
• Teat color at unit removal
• Behavior during milking
• Liner squawks

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4. Maintenance use of equipment
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Service, maintain and evaluate equipment
• Replace inflations, hoses, etc
• Sanitize before milking, wash and sanitize after
  EACH milking
• Chlorinated detergent
• Acid rinse

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4. Maintenance use of equipment
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Properly functioning equipment will affect
• Unit on time
• Milk harvested
• Milk quality (SCC)
• Peak milk flow
• Vacuum level should be checked
• Teat end vacuum should be 10.5 to 12.5 Hg

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5. Good record keeping
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Write it down!
• EACH case of clinical mastitis
• Date detected
• Days in milk
• Quarter
• Treatment
• Outcome
• Culture result (?)
• Manage SCC data to monitor clinical and
  subclinical mastitis

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6. Management of clinical mastitis
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Implement treatment protocol
• Culture if available
• Treat susceptible cases NOT coliforms
• Follow treatment regimen with partial insertion
• Observe milk with-holding time
• CLEARLY mark treated animals

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6. Management of clinical mastitis
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Extended therapy
• 8 days of Ceftiofur (Oliver et al., 2004)
• Clinical Strep uberis
• Subclinical natural infections
• Adding lactoferrin to penicillin treatment
  increases
• Beta-lactam resistant Staph aureus cure
  (Petitclerc et al., 2007)

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How to treat
Dairy Extension
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Why are they hard to treat?
Dairy Extension
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How to treat
Dairy Extension
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How to treat
Dairy Extension
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How to treat
Dairy Extension
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7. Effective dry cow management
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Goal is to
• Eliminate existing infections
• Prevent new infections from occurring

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7. Effective dry cow management
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Keratin plug protects teat ends during dry period
• May take longer to form than originally thought
• ¼ of all teats still open at 6 wks into dry
  period
• Emphasizes importance of dry cow management

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7. Effective dry cow management
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Abrupt milk cessation
• Blanket dry cow therapy
• All quarters all cows
• Dry cow nutrition
• Clean, dry, comfortable environment
• For use in some herds
• Internal teat sealant
• Coliform mastitis vaccine

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7. Effective dry cow management
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Infections likely to clear up during dry period
• Strep
• Coliforms
• Other
• Not likely to clear up
• Staph aureus

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7. Effective dry cow management
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Dry cow nutrition important
• Immune status
• Metabolic disease
• Dry period length
• Needs to be greater than 45 days
• Average 60 days
• CMT fresh cows to pick up new infections
• Treat as necessary

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8. Maintenance of contagious chronics
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Culture, culture, culture
• Segregate cows with contagious mastitis
• Milk them last
• Cull persistently infected animals
• S. aureus
• Mycoplasma
• Pseudomonas
• A. pyogenes

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8. Maintenance of contagious chronics
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Culture, culture, culture
• Culture ALL cows prior to purchase
• Segregate recently purchased cows
• Culture ALL fresh cows (heifers too!)

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8. Maintenance of contagious chronics
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Feeding waste milk can pass contagious
• Treat heifers prior to calving for Staph aureus
• 14-21 days prior to expected calving
• Pirlimycin or penicillin novobiocin (Oliver et
  al., 2004)
• Helps cure existing infections
• Helps prevent chronics

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9. Regular monitoring of udder health
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Is there a SCC testing program?
• Use results to manage mastitis
• 200,000 cells/ml is considered cut off for
  infected gland
• Calculate clinical mastitis rates
• Pay attention to heifers!
• Use records to evaluate/change protocols

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10. Review control programs
NMC 10 Step Control Program

• Obtain objective evaluations
• Veterinarian
• Industry person
• University faculty
• Make use of an udder health team
• Prevention is FAR easier and more economical than
  treatment
• Your program may be VERY different from your
  neighbors!

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Latest and greatest technology
New developments

• On-farm culture systems
• New wave of robotic milkers
• Afi equipment

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On-farm culture systems
New developments

• Fast results
• No delay from the lab
• Base treatment on culture results
• Save money in treatment costs
• Potentially reduce antibiotic resistance
• Tri-plates and bi-plates make identification easy

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On-farm culture systems
New developments
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On-farm culture systems
New developments

• Mastitis is detected
• Sample is taken and plated on media
• At 24 hours plate is read
• Growth on certain media indicate treatment
• Otherwise no treatment is given

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Robotic milkers
New developments

• Difficulties with reliable labor
• Led resurgence of robotic milkers
• Even in smaller herds

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AfiMilk equipment
New developments

• Secured donation of AfiLab and Pedometer Plus
• AfiLab
• In-line measurement of
• SCC
• Fat
• Protein
• Lactose
• Blood
• Urea
• Pedometer Plus
• Pedometers and lying/standing time

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AfiLab
New developments

• Accuracy has been shown
• Between milk meter and inlet to pipeline

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AfiLab
New developments

• Series of measurements within device
• Data is sent directly to computer
• Alerts/flags can be created

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Our goals for AfiMilk equipment
New developments

• To aid in ongoing and future research
• More available data
• No labor input
• To determine economic opportunity
• To identify indicators of disease

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Early detection
New developments

• Avoid severe clinical mastitis
• Treatment could involve
• Antibiotics
• Targets to enhance immune system
• antibiotic cure rate
• chronic cases
• milk quality
• Must identify indicators

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Questions???
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The good, the bad the ugly
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Clean, dry and comfortable
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Clean, dry and comfortable
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Milking procedures
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Milking procedures
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Milking procedures
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Milking procedures
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Keeping milkers happy
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Effective dry cow management
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Calf management
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Heifer management
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Water quality
The good, the bad and the ugly
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Control of the pathogens
Background and Relevance

• Contagious
• Teat dip
• Dry cow therapy
• Lactating therapy
• Environmental
• Teat dip
• Clean housing
• Fluid therapy