Surprise mastitis costs

Higher milk prices this season means that every case of clinical mastitis costs even more, according to Countdown Downunder’s latest calculations. At today’s milk prices, an average case costs $230.

The increase is largely due to strong milk prices because the two biggest costs of clinical mastitis are discarded milk and reduced milk production for the rest of the lactation (see table).

Item                                                                                                   $
Cost of treatment (antibiotics, extra time in the shed, risk of vet visit)      45
Discarded milk                                                                                   67
Decreased yield for remainder of lactation                                             76
Risk of mortality                                                                                   5
Risk of culling                                                                                    35
Risk of contaminating the vat with antibiotic residues                              1
Total                                                                                                229
 

Although mastitis cannot be completely eliminated, too many clinical cases of mastitis can quickly cost dairy farmers a lot of money.

Dr Rod Dyson, Countdown project leader says the most important thing is for farmers to know where they stand. “Count the number of clinical cases in the herd each month,” he advises.

Counting clinical cases is easy. Mastitis treatments are recorded for every farm, either in quality assurance (QA) record books or on-farm PC software. Simply print a mastitis report each month or tally up the number of clinical cases in the QA records.

Countdown recommends taking action if a herd hits one of the Countdown triggers:

• more than three clinical cases per 50 freshly-calved cows;
• more than five clinical cases per 100 cows in the first month of lactation; or
• more than two clinical cases per 100 cows per month during lactation.

“It’s surprising how quickly the costs add up,” said Dr Dyson.

When a herd hits one of these triggers, there’s likely to be an opportunity to save a lot of money by cutting the number of clinical cases. Talk to your vet or factory field officer about ways to reduce clinical mastitis in your herd.
 

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