Good evening everyone, and thank you very much for joining us for the 2nd in this series of our BCVA student clinical clubs. My name is Sarah Peterson from the BCA BCVA board, and I'll be chairing your session tonight. Our clinical clubs are longer than our normal webinars, so that we've got plenty of opportunity for questions.
So please type any that you've got throughout Rachel's session in the Q&A box, during the presentation, and I'll save them all for the end. If you've got any technical difficulties at all, then we do have webinar there on hand to help us. So please let us know by using the Q&A box, and we'll do our best to assist you as well.
If you can't see the Q&A box, if you move your mouse, then the taskbar should become visible at the bottom of the screen and you'll see the Q&A box just pop up there. So it's my pleasure tonight to introduce Rachel Rachel Hayton as our speaker. Rachel qualified from Edinburgh in 1993, and after a brief spell in mixed practise has been in farm animal practise ever since.
She's a senior clinician and shareholder at Synergy Farm Health, which is a large independent farm only practise in the Southwest, which is also a member of Excel Vets. Rachel spends much of her time on mastitis work, which makes her perfect for our topic tonight, and she's particularly focused on prevention, on farm culture and staff training, as well as being involved in the RCV RVC Core Farm Animal rotation. She also oversees Synergy's research programme and she joined us at BCVA on the board in 2017.
So tonight, Rachel will be talking us through the new grads essential toolkit for mastitis. Now, through the presentation, there will be poll questions, just to let you know these are completely anonymous. We don't know your answers, we don't pass on your answers to anybody.
They're there just for fun and to allow interaction. So please take part. Please ask us lots of questions and we'll save them for the end.
So now to hand over to Rachel. Good evening everybody. Thank you very much for tuning in, for what's hopefully gonna be, sort of thought provoking and stimulating evening, we'll see.
Before I start, I just wanna give you a bit of an introduction for those who haven't, who haven't, come across this before, just, . Reminder of who BCVA are, we're the specialist cattle division of the BVA. We're run entirely by an elected board of, of, of directors who are, who are volunteer, and we're a mixture of practising vets, academics and industry vets as well.
So our mission is to be the voice of, of, of the cattle vet and to drive tomorrow's practise, and we do that in a variety of ways. We sit on a lot of steering groups. We talk to a lot of people in the industry and in government, .
And we get involved in, in a whole wide range of, of of topics. And then the education group has been responsible for this fantastic, run of webinars, which hopefully you guys are benefiting from. As a student, if Congress happens this year, fingers crossed, we, we always have student stewarding, and it's a really rewarding thing to do.
I think I did it, first in the early 90s and you know, never been the same since, so would certainly recommend that. And this is all our student reps. We've got one for every vet college.
So if you don't know them, go and seek them out. Hopefully some of them might be listening in tonight. So, first question, first poll question, just to get set the scene, find out, who, where you're from, which vet school do you attend?
So A would be Bristol, B Cambridge, C, Dublin, D Edinburgh, E Glasgow, F Liverpool, G London, H Nottingham, and I, sorry. Brilliant, we've nearly got everybody that's responded there, just 2 of you, not quite sure. Which vet school are you attending?
No OK, we will end the polling there. And tonight, who's in the lead tonight? We've got the RVC.
Well, hey, in the lead tonight with 23% of our listeners. Then in second place, we've got Nottingham, also Hooray. And then we've got Bristol in 3rd place, and we've got a few from each of the other vet schools as well.
So we've got a good spread again. Thanks for everybody for tuning in. Great, thank you.
So those of you from lesser represented vet schools, go up, go back, tell your friends to, to tune in for the next one, yeah. So, really, for the start of this, I, I had a think about what new grads actually need to know about mastitis. I even asked some of our new grads what they thought.
. The problem with mastitis is that it's, it's, it's quite hard to get involved because farmers tend to treat most cases of mastitis and it tends to be seen as a bit of a specialist interest in practise or something that the farmer deals with and keeps, keeps us away. . But on the other hand, it's the single largest disease cost to the dairy industry, so it's massive.
Nearly a third of all antibiotic, that's given to dairy cows is given for mastitis. If you look at it by numbers of courses, that's over 50. So the vet role is really important there.
We have to prescribe, we're involved in health planning, we, we make the treatment protocols, we can help with prevention and we should be helping to avoid milk residues. So we've got a really big role to play. And farmers really appreciate good mastitis advice.
So there's enormous scope to be involved. And the fact that some vets don't get involved is, is to me a real tragedy, and that's what this webinar is about. So what does a new grad need to know on day one?
I'm thinking about absolutely wet behind the ears. You've just arrived. What do you need to know about mastitis in practise?
And actually, I think expectations are, are, are probably quite low. So, which is, which is nice when you're a new grad. You might be expected to treat a case of toxic mastitis.
You might, or, or, or some mastitis, you know, or something where the cow's sick and needs, needs a vet. You might get the, the telephone call about the, the, the problem case. You'd be expected to understand, you know, the pathogens and the treatments.
But a lot of the trickier stuff, I don't think you are gonna be expected to know on day one. So you might be called upon to do teeth surgery. I think it would be OK to, to, to get some support for that.
You, you're probably not gonna be doing health planning on day one or preventive advice, but what I would really like to do is set you on the path to knowing, how to go about that and what the first steps are. And likewise, you're unlikely to be giving advice on selective dry cow. But again, it's, it's something that you need to sort of be thinking about.
So I already make an apology for tonight. I haven't got time to talk about the dry period. So that is another webinar.
If you would like a webinar on the dry period, just put it in a question at the end. Likewise, I'm not gonna, talk about treating, sort of sick cases, because I think that might be one of the things that gets taught quite well. Again, if you disagree and you want to know something, just put it in a question at the end.
So the things that I'm gonna focus on tonight are, giving advice on a, on a, on a recurrent or problem case. I think that's something that You guys find quite scary. And a bit more about understanding the pathogens, hopefully to simplify it, rather than.
Complicate it. And I want to help you to make the first steps in, in feeling confident about health planning and mastitis prevention because they're really where it's at. So, and to do this, I'm gonna introduce you to a few resources that I think, are really, really useful.
Some of them might be a bit obvious, like the practise dispensary, and some of them might be a bit less obvious. But I want, to show you how you can use them, and get a lot out of them. So they're gonna crop up as, as we go along.
So, first of all, understanding the pathogens. Now, this is not, a, a sort of, university lecture on, on mastitis. So I'm not gonna take you, through every pathogen individually and bore you, with, whether it's gramme positive or gramme negative.
But there's a few key things just to take away here. We tend to divide pathogens up into whether they're contagious or environmental, which is very important. And, and it's a good way of, of remembering them.
But on the other hand, don't forget, contagious means it can be passed cow to cow. So, even the environmental pathogens on occasion, can pass cow to cow. So, contagious and environmental sort of describe where they've come from and how they behave.
The, the pathogens that are really adapted for living on and in the cow's udder are ones that we call contagious. So they're the really well adapted ones. A, as I'm sure you, you will know, is well adapted for living on the skin.
It can live on, on your skin, and for persisting in the other. Streptoscalactia, again, very well adapted for living on the skin, often found in teeth lesions. CNS, no, that doesn't stand for central nervous system.
That sounds stands for coagulated negative staff or non aureous staff as the Americans are starting to call it. Mycoplasma, which we don't see so much in the UK, although I think I saw a case today, quite common in the States. Contagious strains of strep ubrus.
So we think about that one as environmental, but there are contagious strains. Strep A galacto, which I don't think I've seen for decades, so that's become very rare. And C.
Bovis, which lives in the teak canal but really is, is what we call a minor pathogen in the sense that it doesn't usually cause disease. And really, everything else is environmental. So that makes life a bit simpler.
Anything that's living in the environment could possibly set up, mastitis in a cow's ladder. But generally, those, those, organisms are not adapted for surviving in the cows. So those are often shorter lived infections, and they're more opportunistic.
So the most common ones obviously are coliforms found in slurry. E. Coli is the most common one of those, but also lepsella, which can be much trickier, .
Can can be quite nasty and be tricky to treat. And are often found in sawdust. Strep ris, which is really common in, straw bedding, also found in sand, cubicles, also found in pasture, and some mastitis.
So, when you're talking about a pathogen, you really, first question, is it, do we think it's contagious or is it environmental? Where has it actually come from? Because that's gonna inform what the most important control measures are.
Is the treatment appropriate for it? Is it, is it something that even responds to treatment because some organisms don't. So if you've got a yeast or, or an algae, a protheca, or actually, even a mycoplasma, it's probably not going to respond to an antibiotic.
So then, what is the chance of the cure? Some, some organisms will give you very good cure rates. Some organisms, complete waste of time treating.
So lebsiela, really hard to cure. Nasty one to treat. Staph aureus, low cure rates.
And if you've got those, then the farmer's expectation needs to be managed because you're not gonna be able to make everything better. So it's important to know those things. And as a result of that, will some cows even need to be culled if they're really not getting better.
So that's sort of all I wanted to say about pathogens, trying to simplify it more than complicate it and just give you the important things you need to think about, for each pathogen. And we have the treatments. So, .
I'm gonna largely restrict myself to milking cow tubes because. We have injectable antibiotics, we're hopefully reserving them just for the severe sick, animals. We're not using injectable antibiotics for the mild cases.
We've also got supportive treatments, non-steroidals, fluids, whatever, and we've got dry tubes, but as I've already apologised, I'm not gonna talk about the dry period tonight due to lack of time. So, questions that you need to ask about, about, milking cow chews. Well, this brings us to resource number one, which is the practise dispensary.
That's, that's a sort of, the only view I get these days of our practise dispensary because we have. What is called a clod dispensary, which means they don't let vets in. Very sensible, because we can't be trusted.
And they found that their stock, stock control is much better since they don't let us in. You might be in a practise with a, an open dispensary, but even if it's a closed dispensary, they're gonna let a new grad in to fill their car. So, First thing I suggest you do is go in there, have a look and see what milking cow tubes are on the shelf.
Cause that is gonna limit you to what your practise is prescribing. So those are the ones you need to learn about. And the questions you need to answer are, is it broad spectrum or is it narrow spectrum?
So, a lot of milking cow tubes have got more than one active in. And, and, and even the ones with only one active ingredient, there'll be the often broad spectrum. There's only a couple of narrow spectrum tubes on the market, and they just tend to be penicillin tubes.
So, first question, is it broad or is it narrow? What are the actives? Are there any gaps?
Is there any weaknesses in it? So, for instance, would it be active against the betylectomase producer? Have a look at the data sheet protocol.
So, what is the actual treatment protocol? How many tubes, what frequency? Most of them will be either 2 or 3 tubes.
Tetradelta is rather famous for only being one tube, which could be repeated once. Is there a data sheet option to extend the treatment? Cause if there isn't, then the farmer can really only extend the treatment on veterinary advice with a minimum withhold of 7 days.
What is the milk withdrawal? And is there a partial insertion option on the tube? So I'll just go back to the previous slide and the picture at the bottom there just shows you, that some tubes come with a partial insertion.
So you can just take the little tip of the lid off, which allows you to just put the Tip of the nozzle up the cow's teat rather than the whole thing, which is gonna create much less damage. So that's, but even if, if they don't come with a partial insertion option, that's how farmers should be tubing cows anyway. So, which brings us on to my second poll question, which is a bit more challenging than the first one.
And that is, which type of mastitis usually gives the best cure rates when treated during lactation? Is it A, contagious clinical mastitis, B, environmental clinical mastitis, or C, subclinical mastitis? OK, 2/3 of you have voted already.
I'll just give those who are just deciding a couple more. Seconds to vote. And we'll draw it a close there.
OK. So, with 38% of the vote, it was a contagious clinical mastitis. In second place with 33% with subclinical mastitis, and environmental clinical mastitis had 29%.
So not much dividing them all up there. OK. Interesting.
OK. So, just goes to show why we need to run these webinars, doesn't it? So, in my opinion, as, as someone who's been treating mastitis for quite a long time, the best cure rates for, clinical mastitis, or for mastitis treated during lactation would be environmental clinical mastitis.
So 29% of you give yourself a big pat on the back. The reason for that, and I probably misled you by talking about clubs earlier, the reason for that is that these are not particularly cow adapted, so they're not so good at persisting in the other. So, very often the cow will manage to clear these herself.
The contagious ones, are, are better at evading either the, the host response or indeed, antibiotics. So often they can either go intracellular or they can, cause the generation of scar tissue and evade, evade, The host responses that way. So contagious clinical mastitis tends to have lower cure rates and certainly needs antibiotic treatment.
Subclinical mastitis, slightly surprisingly and counterintuitively, I think, often will give really disappointing cure rates when treated during lactation. Much better to treat those are drying off. So that was, that was interesting.
I hope I hope. That makes sense to you all. Questions at the end, please.
So, Moving on, I just want to talk a bit about the problem case. And the reason I'm talking about it is I think it's, it's something that happens in practise quite a lot, and it often gets, gets channelled towards the new grad, because you're often the one sitting in the office, waiting for that call to come in. And so the phone, the phone rings and, and it's a farmer with a cow who won't get better.
I used to know what to do. . And it strikes panic into the heart of most rational new grads because they're not really sure what to recommend.
So, again, I'm trying to simplify things for you here. But you, you've really only got certain options. And the first option would be to change the antibiotic.
But a lot of these cases have already had quite a long course of. Broad spectrum antibiotics, quite sometimes quite varied and sometimes the same but broad spectrum. So you've really got to ask yourself what you're gonna add by changing the antibiotic blind.
You've got another option to stop antibiotic treatment. Plus or minus, you could give non-steroidals. That can be quite an appealing, approach, for a couple of reasons, really.
One is some causes of mastitis are not going to respond to antibiotics. So if it's a yeast or a protheca, it's probably actually thriving on the fact that all its competition has been knocked out, by the antibiotics, and sometimes those will actually resolve, self-resolve when you stop the antibiotics. Sometimes you've got really poor tubing technique going on and actually what the farmer is doing is introducing new infections when they chew.
Again, stopping is, is, is gonna be helpful. And sometimes what happens is you've got, the, the original, pathogen has been cleared long since, but what the farmer is looking at is inflammatory damage. So the results of all the, inflammatory mediators and the dead epithelial cells and the dead white blood cells that are being shed in the milk.
So, Treating it further is really not gonna help. Sometimes all the cow needs is a bit of time. That's particularly common with coliforms that have produced a lot of endotoxins, so the severe end of the of of of coliform infections.
Another option if, if, if this cow is not getting better, is to dry off the quarter. What I mean by drying off the quarter is not to insert a dry cow tube, but just to stop milking it, so the cow becomes 3 quarter. And sometimes that's the only option, if you've got an unresponsive mastitis that won't, that won't get better.
If obviously it relies on it being one quarter, not multiple quarters, but, if you spent any time in a parlour and you've counted up how many 3/4 cows come through, that gives you an idea of how often that option is, is taken. Another option if the cow's in calf is she can be dried off early and that might be her best chance of a cure. The dry period is a really good time for curing cows.
And finally, if things are really bad, you can cull the cow. And those are your options. So you can chat those through with the farmer, but the idea that there's a magical, magical tube in, in, in the practise dispensary that the farmer has never been given before is, is, .
Unlikely. And if, if you've already been into the practise dispensary and you've completely explored the acting lactating cow tubes, you'll know what the options are and you'll know whether or not you have anything better to offer. So that that's what you can actually do for that cow at the time.
But the problem case can also give you a little bit more to work with, cos there's things that you can talk about going forwards with that farmer. The first thing would be. Wouldn't it be useful if you had a pre-treatment sample?
Because then we could actually find out what had caused that problem case. Obviously, once the cow's had several days of antibiotics, you're very unlikely to, a, a bacterial pathogen. But if you had a pre-treatment sample, just popped in the in the freezer, it doesn't even have to be, cultured unless it turns into a problem case.
That's really useful. So you could possibly get the farmer to agree that in future, they're gonna do some bacteriology. You can also have a chat about whether the treatment protocols were actually followed.
Does the farmer agree with the treatment protocols they've got, that they think that they need to be tweaked a bit? Was the milk milk withhold that the farmer was using even appropriate for the treatment that they gave? So a lot of farmers forget that if they're gonna go off data sheet, the milk withhold is going to change.
You can have a chat about the tubing technique. Were they actually using, antiseptic wipes or cotton wool and surgical spirit? Were they using partial insertion?
Were they causing problems by their tubing technique? And then you can even, if you're feeling really brave, have a chat about whether they need a bit of help with their mastitis control. So we've already mentioned the fact that there's gonna be treatment protocols that this farmer is following that are in the health plan.
And as a new grad, I will, you know, you're unlikely to be writing health plans in your first week, hats off to you if you are. But every farm that you visit. Is going to have a health plan.
And, and the reason I say that is that in, in the UK, 95% of all dairy farmers are red tractor assured. You pretty much have to be if you're selling your milk to any of the, of the milk processors. The only guys who aren't are gonna be, selling their own milk.
So that brings us to resource number 2, which is red tractor standards. And that might not be something any of you have ever come across, knew existed, thought was relevant to you. But it does actually hold the, the, the standards, to which of all farms, health plans must, must adhere.
So it's, it's quite an important document, actually. The first thing it says in there, relating to mastitis is that every farm should have a health plan and it should be written and updated in conjunction with the vet. So the health plan, what should be in the health plan, there should be treatment protocols, and there should be mastitis control measures.
So it's not just how the farmer treats mastitis, but what are they actually doing to stop mastitis. It should be in that health plan as well. And if you look lower down, there's also, what are they doing?
To, identify treated animals and also pain relief which is going to be relevant for mastitis treatment as well. So the treatment protocols that are in the health plan, they should also be laminated and stuck up on the wall, by the way. They need to cover mild mastitis, and they need to cover severe cases.
There should really be a first line treatment and then, an option for what the farmer does if the cow doesn't get better. This just to avoid those, those phone calls. And, with all the correct milk withdrawal periods in there as well.
There should also be drying off procedures and, and, and thresholds. I've already told you unfortunately we're not gonna talk more about that. And then I've already said the mastitis control measures.
So questions that you could be asking about, about those treatment protocols. Well, so you're on farm, you're talking about mastitis. You're talking about what the farmers actually treated the cow with, what's in the treatment protocol?
Is it actually what they've just done, or is it something completely different? And, for this, you, you sort of need to use a lot of open questions to find out what happens. It's no, it's no good saying, oh, so did you do what was in the treatment protocol?
Because the farmer will usually say yes. You need to say, oh, so, so what did you treat the cow with? And what, yeah, so what do you do when she doesn't get better?
What do you do when? And they might tell you, and then you can find out whether they're following their own protocol, whether the protocols appropriate, whether it needs a tweak. Whether the milk withdrawal periods are right.
And just a little reminder, unless they've got some sound evidence, usually in the form of bacteriology. First line treatment should always really be data sheet recommendations. So if you're gonna go off data sheet, you need some evidence for why you're doing it as a vet.
As a farmer, you should only be going off data sheet under veterinary instruction. Other questions that are pretty relevant, so how is mastitis detected? Is it, is it being picked up?
Are are cows being full milked, or is it being picked up on day 3 because there's a, a swollen ladder or a cow that's a bit off colour? Are all cases being treated or is just some, so some farmers like to, . Just, treat the mild cases with sort of a bit of other cream and, and, and observation, maybe a little bit of a non-steroidal.
That might be fine. But, if they've got a Staph aureus problem, Staph aureus cases nearly always look like mild mastitis cases. So if they get left.
They're not gonna get better. They're gonna set up chronic infections. So actually, depending on what your pattern is, not treating, could be.
How's the recording? Is it being recorded correctly? If it's not, we can't really, analyse any records, and we can't help the farmer to work out, where things are coming from.
And are they taking pretreatment samples, bacteriology. So what else is in red tractor? Well, there's a requirement for an annual vet health and performance review.
And that has to look at a, a variety of things, including the mastitis rate. And part of that should be an antibiotic review, where you look at the antibiotic use on that farm for the year and look for any problems and make, make, a plan of priority, going forward. So our practise sort of produces standard antibiotic reports.
We do it from our practise records, from our record of sales. And we'll do that for all our clients every year. So that makes the job a lot easier for me.
I just have to ask for my report and I can, and I can compare them with all our other clients. I can look at what their use is. Two main ways of looking at antibiotic use, one would be in mix per cake.
In other words, the weight of antibiotic used on that farm per estimated 1 kg of animal. That can be very useful. That will be higher where you've got a very high use of injectable antibiotics, or indeed foot foot bath antibiotics, which we hope aren't been used anymore, not in our practise anyway.
. And then you've got a number of cow courses. So, in other words, if you've given a cow a course of 33 lactating cow tubes, that would be one cow course. It wouldn't, it wouldn't contribute much in terms of makes per cake, but it would be a cow course.
So when the cow courses is high, often that's telling you that there's a bit of a mastitis. So that's the two ways we look at it. If you're not lucky enough to have a practise that can just, churn out useful reports for you at the touch of a button, this brings me on to resource number 3.
And that is the, University of Nottingham has produced an antimicrobial use calculator. Now, the great thing about that is it's, it's, free access. It can be downloaded from, the AHDB dairy website.
And anybody can use it, they've made it a free resource. And what you can do is you can enter all the antibiotic that's been sold to a farm. For any time period, but usually for the year.
And the antimicrobial use calculator will work out the antibiotic, use in mixed cake and in numbers of courses, and it will even tell you, which, if any, of the antibiotics are critically important. So, it's, it's a good, it's a good way if you haven't, if you practise software won't let you do it. Just a, a small, reminder, which is that some antibiotics are heavier than others.
So, you know, you can, you can end up with a bad, a slightly worse number just because you're using certain antibiotics. But generally speaking, it's a really useful way of monitoring antibiotic use. One of the most useful things that I look at when I'm looking at mastitis, antibiotic use is just how many lactating and co tubes have been sold.
And that's something that we, we put on our report as well. That's actually quite an easy thing to take off, any practise system. And then you can, you can find out what the mastitis, rate is.
You can find out what their recorded mastitis cases are, and you can work out the average number of tubes per recorded case. Now, this is a far more interesting thing to do than it sounds, believe me. Some of the numbers you get when you work that out, you are absolutely staggering.
So if you get a big number, that implies either that the farmer's way over treating every mastitis case, or that they're under-recording their mastitis cases, one or the other. So my personal record was 167 tubes per mastitis case. And it wasn't because, they were overtreating it.
It's just that they weren't recording. But it did, I did tease them a bit about it. And if they're low, then it begs the question, are they treating all cases, or worse still, where are they getting their meds from?
Have they got some dodgy, dodgy, internet pharmacy that they're getting them from without prescription? So this is just for those who who aren't familiar with it, this is just to remind you that in 2017 the industry set their own targets for antibiotic use. We made a commitment to reduce our antibiotic use.
The rumour task force, . Set up targets to be met by 2020, and these are the ones that relate to mastitis. So we've got a target for lactating cow tubes.
Of 0.727 tubes per cow per year. And we've got a target for total usage of antibiotics as well, there.
And those are the sort of core metrics that that those relate to. So the mix perk that I talked about earlier, don't worry about the the, the, the finer points of it, it sort of assumes an average, an average weight of cow, which, which is. Very low, but it's averaged out to account for the young stock on the farm as well.
So it assumes a weight of antibiotic per kg of of of animal on the farm, and there's your average number of courses. So those are the two ways of looking at it. So how do we set about reducing our antibiotic use in mastitis?
There's basically. There's, there's 3 ways. The most important way is always gonna be if we can reduce our mastitis, we've got nothing to treat.
We'll reduce our treatment. And I'm gonna talk later about, the, the, the ways we do that. The Only the, the, the evidence-based way in the UK has been the AHDB mastitis control plan.
I'm gonna talk about that. We could also modify our approaches to treatment, in other words, try and persuade our farms to stop overtreating mastitis. Avoiding systemic antibiotics, really, really important.
We shouldn't be using systemic antibiotics for mild cases, and making sure we're not giving really, really long tube courses. So always worth asking, what's the longest course that your clients are giving? Are they doing that with veterinary supervision or are they just going, going off there and that, which I'll talk about that in a moment as well.
Yeah, we're gonna talk about milkshare relating to that. And then the third, way is to minimise use by selectively treating. I should probably have a poll question on that, but whether you think that's a good idea, but generally speaking, Selectively treating mastitis just blind without knowing what the causes are, really bad idea.
Possibly if you know a lot about your pattern of, of infection or if you carry out on-farm culture, might be a good idea. I haven't got time to talk about on-farm culture, well, that was another webinar last week. So I'm gonna talk about the top two of those.
And the first one I'm gonna talk about is modifying approaches to to treatment. So I've already sort of alluded to the fact that farmers have a bit of a tendency to overtreat. For mastitis.
And the trouble with that is it's our responsibility to make sure that antibiotics get used properly, even though we're not usually there when they're being used. So the way we control that is through the health plan. So we need to ask, you know, when, when these treatments are being given, is it, is it legal?
Is it the best for cow health? And is the right milk withhold, being applied? And this rather baffling diagram is actually, it's actually a really useful diagram should you ever need it.
It's the way we work out, it, it summarises the medicines cascade. In other words, it's how you work out whether a medicine is being used legally or not. So basically, if number one, the medicine needs to be licenced.
And it needs to be licenced for food producing animals. If it is licenced, is it being used as per veterinary instructions? If it, if it is, that's fine.
Is it being used as per the data sheet? If it is fine, if it's not. Then it has to be, given under specific written veterinary instructions, OK?
If it's not being given under veterinary instructions, then that's a legal use. If it is, That could be cascade use, but then there's a minimum 7 day meal withhold. OK?
So I, I don't expect you to memorise this, but I do want you to make, make you aware it's there and it's quite useful, for working out. Likewise, this one is just helps you to work out, how to apply the correct milk milk withhold. But if you want to know where to find those, diagrams, the answer is go on a milkshare course.
And that's resource number 3, is it 3? Yeah, no, no 4, sorry. So, .
As a new grad, you're not gonna be signing up for a milkshare course in your first week, but it's a very useful thing and it's something that you should be aware of. It's an, it's an accreditation course for farmers. So, farmers can go on the training course and get certified, and the training's delivered by their vet, and it's all about avoiding residues in milk and, basically how to, how to administer medicines to milking cows legally.
It fulfils the red tractor requirement for medicine training, but there is also a milkshare for vets course run by BCVA and it is very useful, and I would recommend it. So this is just a little, little case study just to demonstrate how looking at tube usage can be, can be quite a useful thing. So this was a a dairy that I've been involved with for for some years and .
This is their tube usage just sort of going from 2014 up to 2018, and you can see it had come down quite a lot. And actually, in that time, we did quite a lot of work on mastitis control and mastitis prevention with, with some success, and, the figures look as though we, you know, did a really good job. But in 2018, when I looked at their average tube use per mastitis case.
It came up as 66 tubes per case. In their health plan, the treatment protocol said 3 tubes, and I wasn't aware that they had any particularly problematic pathogens or any particular reason why, . Why that should be longer, but certainly there was adaman who'd had experience of.
Nasty, toxic cases of mastitis and was very loathe to stop treating until the milk had returned to normal. So, we had quite a few chats about this. It's a difficult thing to change somebody's .
Habits, and it's a difficult thing when they're worried that a cow's gonna get sick and go downhill. So it, it took a bit of work, but in 2019, their tube usage had come down to 3.2 tubes per case.
And, actually they must start to come down a bit as well, but, But that happened with no worsening at all in cure rates. So there were no adverse consequences to bringing that, that treatment course down. It just needed a bit of careful communication and monitoring and checking.
As they went. But if I hadn't looked at that figure, I wouldn't have known at all. And that just goes to show how we were looking at courses per cow per year and, and that actually had a big effect on the, on the actual, antibiotic use by courses.
So next question, poll question 3. So the estimated industry average, so the estimated cost of mastitis for the industry is, is comes up as an average of 250 pounds per case. What makes the biggest contribution to that 250 pounds?
Is it A, vets and meds? Is it B, discarded milk, C, loss of yield, D mortality, or E cell count penalties? OK, we'll just give you a few more seconds just for the last few to to vote.
Good high percentage of people voting again. OK, so we'll close it in 321. Ending polling.
OK. So, we had a resounding winner here with C, loss of yield, which was 60%. In second place, we had discarded milk, 21%, cell count penalties was 12%.
Bet and meds 5%, and mortality 2%. So loss of yield, clear winner with, 60% of votes. OK, fantastic.
OK, that's good, cause I was worried that I was giving you, difficult questions, but I think this one was a bit more, attainable. So the, the correct answer is loss of yield. So, mortality is the biggest cost when you're looking at severe cases of, of, of, of mastitis.
But obviously, most cases of mastitis are mild, so. Across all cases of mastitis, the biggest cost is loss of yield. So going back to what I was talking about earlier, if we're talking about er giving shorter, shorter treatments, that's gonna make me vein meed cheaper.
You're gonna throw away less milk, so you'll save on that cost. But actually, you're gonna make no difference at all to the loss of yield, or the, or indeed, the risk of mortality or the cell count penalty. So, actually, you're gonna have a fairly limited, impact on, on, on the cost of that case.
Which brings me on to resource number 5, which is all about reducing mastitis. Now, again, you know, I've got this imaginary new grad, first week of work, finding your way around slowly. You're not about to enrol on the AHDB mastitis control plan.
I do appreciate that. But I want you to to be is aware that it exists and have it in your sights, because it's a really good resource. So what what the mastitis control plan is, it's it's a training course that vets can go on.
They can become, you know, plan deliverers, and that qualifies them to use software and go out and do, mastitis investigations. You can do mastitis investigations without doing that. But actually, it's a really good grounding in understanding how to carry out a mastitis investigation.
What, what you do is you learn how to find out where new infections are coming from, whether they're contagious or environmental, and if they're environmental, are they from the dry period or are they from lactation. You have to do a lot of risk assessment on the farm, and then, you're able to look at the risk factors and link them back to, which ones are most important. So you'd be looking at risk factors connected to milking routines, the environment, dry cow and calving management, and then be able to work out which ones are the most important.
So, Not for, not for week one, but something to be aware of and also, it's sort of formed the basis for for mastitis control in the, in the UK even by people who aren't aren't carrying out plans. The reason it's so important to know where, when a new infections happening? Are they happening in the dry period, or are they happening, happening during lactation?
Obviously, control measures are gonna be completely different for the two things, so it can really enable us to give targeted advice. Just a reminder in case anyone, either hadn't, wasn't aware or had forgotten. When I talk about the dry period, mastitis that happens even in the first month after carving, gets classified as mastitis of dry period origin, and lactation period origin is mastitis more than 30 days calved.
The reason for that is not because we just like to make life complicated, although we do. It's because infections that get into the udder in the dry period and around calving often don't cause clinical mastitis until after calving. That's because obviously the dry udders a much more hostile environment for bacteria.
So the cow calves, she comes into milk, she starts the teat sphincter opens up. That's when she's, she's, much more susceptible to, to clinical signs. So if we can sort of pin down what pattern of of mastitis is going on on a farm, we can then look at where the infections are being picked up and give good advice.
So if we're coming up with dry period environmental, we're gonna go and look in the carving yards. We're gonna look in the the carving pens, the transition cows, and we'd also, if we're sensible, just do a check on drying off technique. If it's lactation period environmental, we're gonna go and look at the milking cow's environment.
The key thing is gonna be cow cleanliness and all the things that feed into cow cleanliness, bedding management, slury management, ventilation, space, feeding water, and then also, we're gonna get the parlour and have a look at the parlour, how it functions and how the milking routines might contribute. If on the other hand, it's a contagious pattern, we're gonna be concentrating on how spread happens from cow to cow, which brings us back to the, the NARD. Which, which sort of, was all we thought we needed to know about mastitis 30 years ago.
So, which brings us on to targets, so there's no point analysing data if you, if you can't remember what normal is. . I'm gonna keep this reasonably brief because I, I appreciate it's not the most, stimulating topic ever.
So we all, have a sort of idea in our head that a decent mastitis rate is maybe less than about 30 cases per 100 cows per year. . That's, that's a reasonable target.
We have clients who would be well below that, so that's not a target for everybody. Some of our clients would be doing a lot better than that. And then we wanna know how much mastitis is coming from the dry period and how much is, is, is occurring during lactation.
We also wanna have a look at heifers. Do, do heifers have a special problem because they have different management and they have different challenges. Is the mastitis seasonal?
And is recurrence a problem? Those are the sorts of things we're looking at. So I'm a bit nervous about this whole question cause I don't.
I think this is a tough one, but let's, let's give it a go anyway, and I'll explain it afterwards. So, poll question number 4 is, what is the target for dry period origin clinical mastitis? Is it A 5%, B, 20%, C, 1 in 12 or 8%, and D, I have no idea what you're talking about.
OK, good start there. We've got again nearly 2/3 of you that have voted. It's going up over 80%, so I think we'll just give you a couple more minutes just to decide.
Sorry, a couple more seconds just to decide. OK, we'll close it there. OK.
You'll be relieved to know, Rachel, that the majority haven't gone for D. So the winner here with 48% of the vote is C, which is 1 in 12 or 8%. Not too far behind with 36% was A 5%, and then we had D at 10% and B was 7% of the vote.
So, with, answer C. OK, that's quite heartening. But I, I, I feel I, I feel I definitely owe an explanation to, to at least the 10% of you.
So this is good. So the correct answer is indeed C. Well done.
That's half of you, actually. That's pretty good. Because I was a bit nervous about that question.
So, for dry period origin mastitis, what we do is we imagine that we have 12 cows carving in. And for every 12 cows that calve in, one of them is allowed to get mastitis of dry period origin. In other words, either during the dry period or in the first month.
And that if you work out 11 in 12, that's the same as 8%. So that's our, our target for that one. I can't ask you if that makes sense, and I can't look for nodding heads, but I hope you'll, you'll take my word for it.
Which brings me on to poll question 45 even, which is. This one, which is, what is the target for lactation period origin clinical mastitis? Is it A, 5%, B, 30%, C, 2 in 12 or 17%, and D, I still have no idea what you're talking about.
OK, taking a little longer to decide on this one. So I'll give you a couple more seconds just to Just to have a go, it's OK if you still have no idea what Rachel is talking about. OK, we'll close it there.
Nearly all of you have voted. That's brilliant. So, we've got a clear winner here with 68% of the vote.
It's answer C, 2 in 12 or 17%. Then we've got 20% going for A, 5%, and 11% going for answer B. And we've got nobody who still doesn't have any idea of what you're talking about, which is great.
Oh, I find that really heartening. It almost feels interactive. That's great.
Yeah. So, well done. The correct answer was, indeed C.
So that was 2 and 12. And, so, again, the idea is that you've got the same 12 cows who carved in. One of them was allowed to get mastitis from the dry period.
And as they go through lactation, they're gonna have a, they're gonna be lactating for about 10 months. The first month of that. Can dry period origin and the rest, the remaining 9 months count as lactation period.
And another 2 of them are allowed to get mastitis in that 9 month period. So that's our target, 2 in 12 or 17%. OK?
If you, if you think about it, so we've got a target of 30%, 88% of that was. Dry period origin, 17% of that was lactation period origin. And then you've got 5% which is going to be down to recurrence.
OK, so that's, that's why there's a gap between the 30% and your, your other two targets. OK, what about targets the subclinical mastitis? .
Subclinical mastitis is cows that have picked up a high cell count, but they with or without the presence of clinical signs, OK? So if, if, if, if we've got a herd that milk records, that is, you know, every month they get, they each cow gets tested, then we know what the individual cow cell counts are and we know who's got a high cell count and who doesn't. So we only know anything about subclinical mastitis, really.
In the herds that milk record. If they don't milk record, the only thing we know is the bulk milk cell count, and that's just giving us a rough idea of what the herd prevalence is. But it's it's, it's obviously it's an average, so we don't, we don't know what's going on at an individual cow level.
All right, I'm having a bit of a problem with my slides, it's just. Any idea why that's not going forward? So, guys.
And it all looks the same from our end, it's jammed. You want to try coming out and presented for you and then going back into slideshow and seeing if that helps. Oh there we go, marvellous, sorry about that guys.
So . For a subclinical mastitis, the dry period new infection rate, the target for that is less than 10%. So that's the sorry, that's the, the percentage of animals that pick up a new infection across the dry period, so they dried off.
Low cell count, they carved in a high cell count. The target for that is less than 10% of cows. Lactation new infection rate, so every month, the cows are gonna get milk recorded and a certain number of them are gonna have acquired a high cell count.
And the target for that each month is less than 5%. And then we've got also the dry period cure rate, and that's the percentage of high cell count cows who have finished the dry period with a low cell count, i.e., they've managed to to cure across the dry period.
They might have self cured, they might have cured with antibiotics. The target for that is 85%. OK?
So, in other words, the dry period is a really good time for curing cows. So that's, that's sort of our targets, that's how we're gonna judge our, our farms on how they're doing as to whether they're meeting those targets or not. Then we've also got to work out, is it a contagious problem or is it an environmental problem.
And that is actually, one of the trickiest things to do when you're, when you're looking at, at records. I'm gonna give you a few pointers here, but I, this is not a weak one, competence. This is, this is, .
An acquired skill. But again, it's really important to be aware of the general principles behind this. So you, you're not gonna be looking at farm records and saying, you've got a contagious problem, but you need to understand the, the sort of characteristics of a contagious problem.
So if we've got contagious mastitis, we're gonna have a lot of high cell count cows, and there's gonna be a tendency that they're gonna become chronic. That's because they're getting infected. And they're being infected with pathogens that are co adapted, that are good at sticking around in others.
So they're gonna be difficult to shift. And they're not gonna necessarily be giving us severe clinical signs, cause that's, that's a sign of a, a, a, an efficient pathogen, isn't it? That doesn't, doesn't cause severe disease.
So we might not even be seeing a lot of clinical mastitis, but we'll be seeing a lot of high cell counts. But the clinical mastitis we are seeing might not be curing very well, and we might be seeing a lot of recurrence. Going along with that, we're gonna see poor dry period cure rates again.
We'll be curing some of these cows across the dry period, but not as many of them as we'd normally hope. The other thing about contagious mastitis is that it's not gonna be seasonal. But why should it be a lot worse in winter than in summer if it's being spread, through the parlour?
So if it's just a winter problem, it's probably not contagious. It's just a summer problem, probably not contagious. And the types of pathogens that we'll see on bacteriology, classically, it's gonna be Staph aureus.
We might see strep diss, if, if we've got problems with teeth condition. Strep Aylaia, I get really excited if I were to find that now, . Mycoplasma is a contagious pathogen, but we're not gonna find it on routine bacteriology.
So we have to be suspecting it and looking for it and go and get selective culture to find that. Environmental mastitis. We might see high cell counts, with environmental, but we've got less of a tendency for them to become chronic.
We're probably gonna see a clinical picture first, so we're gonna see clinical mastitis with or without high cell counts. As a general rule, if you've got a coliform pattern, you'll see. Mas clinical mastitis with low cell counts.
If you've got a strapubri problem, you'll have clinical mastitis with cell count problem as well. We should see good cure rates. Although there are a few exceptions to that, such as lebsella, and we should see good dry period cure rates.
Unfortunately, there's also some exceptions to that. So we could be undermining our dry period cure rates by, not failing to cull out real chronic cows or by giving lots of cows new infections across the dry periods. So there's all sorts of ways, or even by just making really bad drying off decisions.
So that, there's lots of ways we could undermine that. One of the real keys for environmental infection is it's likely to be seasonal, or if it's dry period origin problem or seasonal, it's almost certainly environmental. And the types of pathogens we see on bacteriology, we're gonna see coliforms, we're gonna see streporis, we're gonna see random stuff that's just popped in from the environment.
But one of the key things to remember when you're worrying about too is these days, the vast majority of mastitis patterns are environmental. So tends to be that, that my default option is to assume environmental unless I'm seeing really strong suggestion that it's contagious. If that's just blown your mind slightly, I'd like you to introduce, I'd like to introduce you to resource number 6, which is called Quarter.
Now Quartoro sort of sprang out of the AHDB mastitis control plan, and it's basically, it's a tool to help you make all those diagnoses. So if, if, data analysis blows your mind, but you'd still like to help your clients, Quar Pro, could be the way to go. And it's a tool that's free from AHDB dairy.
So there's no obligatory training. Some training, I think it's useful, but it's not obligatory. Anybody can download this.
In fact, farmers are encouraged to download it themselves if they, if they're able. That's the website, go hunting if you would like to. The idea behind this, was, really the question, could we, could, could the process of data analysis be automated?
Could you give it to a robot and get the correct answer? And the, the short answer to that is rather depressingly, yes, they don't do a bad job at all. So the data itself comes from milk recording data.
So this can only really be done if a farm's milk recording. So milk recording, data comes in the form of something called a CDL file, and it can be downloaded from the, from the website of the milk recording company. There's a couple of tools that can be downloaded from the HDB website.
One is, is, is called the CDL converter, and all it does is converts the file into the right format. So, and the other one is called the pattern analysis tool, and that's the one that does the automatic data analysis. So you convert this TDL into the right sort of file, you load it into the pattern analysis tool.
I'm gonna come back to that in a minute, and that's what it looks like. And hey presto, you get all the, all the figures, loaded up. If if you look at that in detail, you'd see that the top is all about subclinical mastitis, the pale blue area there.
Hang on. It is all about subclinical mastitis, and the darker blue area there is all the figures that relate to clinical mastitis. And it's analysed it in 3 month periods going back historically, that's the most recent 3 months and going back and so on.
Don't worry about all the figures, because that's not the really important output. The important output. But is, and then, oh, sorry.
This then looks at the data quality. So annoyingly for a robot, it's even telling you whether your data's any good or not. And it will highlight any issues.
Here, it's highlighting that there's low numbers of heifers carving. Well, a lot of farms, have seasonal carving heifers, and that might be absolutely fine. So, that's not a problem.
And then that's the actual output of the tool. And what it does is it gives you a traffic light system. So red is bad, amber is dodgy, and green is good.
And it allows you to work out what is the most important pattern for mastitis. So current is in the last 3 months. So in the last 3 months in this farm.
The pattern was lactating period environmental. So it's really, it's a shortcut and it's a good. Backup, actually, because if you're looking at data and you're not sure, you can go and see what Quarterro thinks and find out, you know, if it agrees with you or not.
Just going back quickly, sorry to get my slides mixed up. There is a problem occasionally when farms don't report their clinical mastitis to the milk recorder. I did a series of, workshops, for farmers on this, a few months ago, and a good half of them hadn't put their clinical mastitis on.
So that was quite frustrating. It's possible to load it up, manually. You can add it in.
It's all, it's all possible. But it's another step. It's slightly annoying.
It's a bit of work. So the best thing to do is to Ask the farmer if they're giving their mastitis cases to the mill recorder, and if they're not, then beseech them too. So that's just a little, little plug there.
Right. If all that looks like gobbledegook, again, there's lots of explanatory notes, you can just click on a little eye and it will tell you what it all means. OK, so it's quite a useful little, it, it's supposed to be, aimed at farmers as well as vets.
So it's, it's quite easy to understand. Going along with that, because obviously making a diagnosis on its own isn't, isn't all that useful. You then need to know what to do with that diagnosis.
So going along with that, AHTB have produced some really use. Useful resources. So if you come up with a contagious mastitis pattern, you can access some resources on the website for what is likely to be the problem, what are the things to look for.
So if it's contagious, obviously you're thinking about the 55 point plan, you're thinking about early and effective treatment and recording, culling chronic cases, post milking teat dipping really important. Targeted antibiotic dry cow therapy, you want to treat your infected cows that drying off and making sure that your milking machine is functioning properly and not adding to the problem. Add that to that, also biosecurity, so you know, making sure you don't buy in, buy in problems and possibly segregation, keeping, keeping infected groups away from uninfected groups and making sure your milking routines aren't spreading infection.
Likewise, if you get an environmental dry period pattern, there's a load of resources, really useful. So the sorts of things that that you'd be thinking about if you get an environmental dry period pan. So the first place I always look is the carving yard.
So what's the environment that the cows are carving down in? Really common, system that I've got a picture of here is, is a sort of last minute system. So the dry cows will be kept on cubicles, and then when they're springing, they're gonna be moved into the the calving yard.
And the purpose of that system is it takes pressure off, the carving yard, or it could be that they carve down in individual pens. So you want to look at what's the stocking density in there, what's the bedding management? How often is it being bedded up?
It should be every day if it's straw, how often is it been cleaned out, and how long are the cows staying in there before they have to be milked. So that's a sort of straw yard that's really well bedded up. That one's a bit, a bit sparser.
Some systems, the cows will be carving through an individual pen. So again, how many cows are carving through there before it's cleaned out, how often is it bedded up, is it cleaned out between cows? And then some systems have this kind of rubber matting, with bedding, which is really hygienic because that's gonna get cleaned out between every cow.
Other, other places will, will run transition yards, which also double up as the carving yards, so the cow will go in there about 3 weeks before she calves. And then she'll carve down in there. And so often space, can be a bit more of a challenge in those.
They often get overstocked and, store yards obviously need, need good management. So this one, you know, was. Bedded up, daily, cleaned out every 3 weeks and was really, very well managed.
That one was being cleaned out, but it was one of those clean out jobs where half of, half of the stuff was left behind and it was being bedded up. But again, you can see it was a, it was a bit of a partial job. So.
A bit more of a risk. And then how long the cow gets left in these environments is really important, so we're aiming for sort of ideally 12 hours or less, before they are being milked. Don't forget, often cows carving outside.
So, it's really important to go and have a look. You know, we say they're carving in a field. What sort of a field is it?
Is it a lovely, well covered pasture? Is it, is it a field of maize stubble? How often is it being rotated?
So, carving paddocks, they should be rotated every 2 weeks. And there should be at least 3 paddocks in the rotation, so they're getting rested for 4 weeks before they're returned. And what's the stocking rate as well?
So those are just a few things to think about. So if you come up with an environmental lactation pattern, likewise, really good resources online, . Really introduce you to all the things you really need to be thinking about.
So obviously what goes on in the parlour is very important for environmental lactation pattern. But a lot of that is relating to hygiene, once again, how clean are the cows when they come in? What's the pre-prep routine like?
Is that, is that muck being introduced into the teat through the milking process? So here we've got a lovely clean cow. I photographed her just the other day in the parlour.
He we've got some, some fairly nice clean cows being milked. But you know, even clean cows, what's really important is how clean are the others. So have a good look.
And what's the pre-prep routine? Is the parlour functioning, or is it causing problems? And how often are the lines being changed?
So again, looking at the cow, the milking cow's environment out of the parlour. The, the output really here is cow cleanliness. So it's, it's how clean are those cows.
And mostly all the other things we're looking at are feeding into cow cleanliness. So this was an interesting one. Actually, the cows are really clean, but obviously at some point they were having to walk through slurry.
Anything that ends up on, on a cow's back foot does have a tendency to be in contact with her ladder when she lies down. So that was really a shame, and it was undermining a lot of the mastitis efforts. Cow positioning, really important, slurry management, ventilation, bedding management.
So this is just to show the brisket board in the in the cubicle that's responsible for the cow's positioning. It's responsible for how far forward she sits in that cubicle. And obviously it needs to be positioned for the largest cows in the herd, not the smallest.
So there's always going to be a problem if you've got a mixed group with heifers probably sitting too far forward. There's just a couple of pictures to demonstrate a few of the problems we see, ventilation, really common problem. So many buildings we see are either rather old or just not built by anybody with any understanding of ventilation in a cowhouse.
So cobwebs hanging down like that is a pretty good suggestion that ventilation is, is inadequate. And likewise standing water is gonna be an issue if cows come trotting through that, that's gonna cause a problem. Bedding storage, really important.
So here we had a nice, sawdust store. Very often sand is stored outside, so when it's put on the beds, it's wet. That might be OK if the ventilation's up to it.
But it's obviously putting a lot more moisture in there. And then obviously don't ignore when they're at grass, all the same things about pasture rotation, stocking density, have a look at the gateways and the tracks and the places where the cows congregate, so either around the water troughs or under the trees. So that's just a little guide to Quarter Pro.
This is, this is an amazing graphic, just to show you how it's supposed to work. I'll tell you now, I didn't design this cause I don't think my PowerPoint skills are up to it. But, so the idea is that you would be looking at, at, at, mastitis records 4 times a year.
Have a look at what the pattern is, where are the new infections coming from, make a diagnosis, is it, is it dry period, lactation, environmental contagious? Hef is involved, is recurrence a problem? Is it seasonal?
That way you can identify key management areas, which would inform what, what to do, which needs to be done in conjunction with the farmer. So then when you make those changes, you can come back and Review it And see whether the changes worked. If there's a, if that's not working, you can go and do a full masti control plan.
So that's just a little introduction to how Quarter Pro works. I didn't mention this in my introduction, but I've, I've just cheekily put in there resource number 7. And resource number 7 is you and your open mind.
So I just wanted to do a little plug, really. There's, there's, there's being a new grad. It's quite a scary thing, but it's also such a fantastic opportunity.
Never else in your life will, will know, people will not expect you to know everything. So you can go on to Farm, you can ask every question under the sun. Most of them you'll get away with, with, with enthusiasm.
So when it comes to mastitis, farmers do not expect you to be an expert. You can go and you can ask questions about the housing, the bedding, the parlour, the routine, everything. And if you ask questions, that's the best way to get involved.
So, yeah, go out there and sock it to them. Thank you very much. Brilliant, thank you so much, Rachel.
That was a really, really great, overview and loads of tips there for, for everybody listening. Now we have got some time for questions. Please keep them coming in.
We've already got a few, lined up for you, Rachel. You'll also, if I could just ask you just to spare 30 seconds once you've, once this student clinical club is wrapped up, just to give us your feedback, it should have popped up in your browser. It is really important.
This is the 2nd in our series, and it is really important that we get your feedback on what topics you'd like, or if you've got any feedback on the, on the sessions at all. So, please keep those questions coming in, pop them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screens, and, we'll start now with our first question. So, there's, a question which you sort of, Sort of did refer to in your your sort of, targets for clinical mastitis.
There's one that came in asking, whether you thought there was an acceptable level of mastitis on farm. Now, you mentioned less than 30 cases per 100 cows of clinical mastitis, but a lot of people are actually, lower than that. What do you think is acceptable in your opinion?
That's a really hard question to answer because obviously we have a target of 30 and we tend to think if someone's below that, then they're doing quite well. But a lot depends on severity. So if somebody had 30 severe cases, per 100 cows per year, that would be too much and they would be really anxious about it.
So maybe 30 mild cases is acceptable. I think, I'd say the acceptable levels for severe cases is, is probably zero. That would be what we'd be all aiming for.
You know, we don't want to see sick, you know, wobbly scouring down the cows, that distresses everybody. So, I think you talk about mastitis, it's not one condition, is it? It could be everything from a few clots in the milk to a cow that's on at death's door, and I think mild, it's fine to talk about an acceptable level being less than 30 cases per 100 cows per year.
Brilliant. So, as well as looking at these figures, we need to have discussions with the farmers about how, what severity they're seeing as well. So, we've got two questions here which sort of relate to each other, and that's about, drying off a quarter.
You mentioned that we shouldn't be using dry cow therapy on these, but do we need to do anything else, prior to stopping the milk quarter? And then once she's been dried off for that one quarter, what do you do at dry off then with that quarter? And or do you expect the cow to remain three-quarters for life, or will she come into milk on that quarter again, expectation?
So I've asked you a lot of things there. I said, No, no, that's good. Really good questions.
Brilliant. So, for drying off a quarter, obviously, if it's incredibly milky, that's gonna be problematic. It, because every time she comes into the parlour, it's going to run.
But amazingly, that's often not the case. You also want to know that it's not gonna flare up and make her sick. So you do need to keep a close eye, in just.
So, most people would put a lactating cow tube up and stop milking it. I didn't mention this, but there is also something called a mini dry period, which is where people do that, stop milking them for 7 days and then start. And actually, you can sometimes get enhanced, cure rates by doing that, but that's, that's a bit of a, bit of a niche thing, so I didn't, I didn't raise it.
In terms of, are they 3/4s for life? Some of them are, and some of them aren't. So, Usually what I suggest, and what a lot of farmers will do is that they will check when they carve in, and they check the quarter and they'll CMT it, and they'll have a good look and make a call as to whether it's, it's any good or not.
And some of them will come good after the dry period, and others won't. mostly cows do surprisingly well. A three quartered cow would often almost give the same as a four quartered cow.
It is, it is amazing. I remember that from when I was, was dealing with mastitis, just how much these cows would, would then go and produce more on the, on the 3 that they remain, remain on. You'd rather hope that some of these that didn't cure, they'd, they'd cull because they'd drop production, but actually, the other thing would happen and they'd increase production sometimes.
So, another question about targets here. Could you just run through the subclinical targets again? Yeah, sorry.
I, I didn't want to bore people, so I, I probably did rush through those a little bit. It's someone's computer crashed, so that's why they came. So, so the dry period origin, new infection rate, the, the target for that is less than 10%.
So you want less than 10% of your low cell count cows are drying off to carve in and then be high cell count. So, you've gotten a new infection rate, which is every month. How many cows, what percentage of cows pick up a new infection each month and that's less than 5%.
And then my only other subclinical one was the dry period cure rate which is over 85%. Brilliant, thank you very much for that. And we've got some great questions coming in here, regarding regulations for, so you mentioned retractor obviously regulates all farms that are selling to the likes of Muller, AA, etc.
Who regulates the milk standards for farmers who produce their own milk? -huh, I believe that's just the Food Standards Agency, isn't it? I think it's only the food I say only, they're a pretty important body.
I think it's the Food Standards Agency, unless you know any. Any better, so I think it's that's not that's who it is. Not that I'm aware of.
I was always looking at the dairy he supplied our milk this morning and I couldn't find anything about it. And they didn't have a red tractor on their label, as my son pointed out to me. He was looking for the red tractor.
So, I don't know. That's a really good question and one that we'll, we'll possibly try and just, just find out and get, I mean. I mean, they, they, obviously they, they, there's all sorts of legislation they have to comply with so that they could fall foul of trading standards, but the actual, It's the Food Standards Agency who are ultimately responsible for them selling safe milk.
Yeah. But they have. And another thing to point out, I suppose, is, although we have red tractor, there are some milk processors, such as our that also have additional standards that they place on top of red tractor as well.
So there are lots of different standards which farmers are having to, having to meet. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, red tractor is the, is the bare minimum, but, yeah, I, I thought it was a good starting point.
Yes, brilliant. Now we have still got questions coming in, so we're gonna carry on if you're OK, Rachel, we have reached 9 o'clock, but we'll, we'll, we'll keep going for those listening if you're, if you're all right with that. What are the benchmarks targets, that we're aiming for with regards to antibiotic use when using the HDB calculator?
Are they, are they marked on the calculator when they use it? Do they, do they indicate whether it's high or low, or OK? That's a good question.
I can't remember if the targets are on there or not. So the. So the rumour target taskforce targets would be, I think it's less than 21 Migs per kg is the sort of antibiotic use target for the UK.
I mean, most, most of our clients would be well below that. We, we sort of try to target anyone who's who's above it, really, and have a look at where that's coming from. But they, you know, those were those were targets for 2020, so they're likely to get reviewed.
Quite soon anyway, so this is the changing world. Yes. OK.
And also on the the targets, could you just expand on what MS per PCU stands for and how that's calculated? Oh boy, I knew someone was gonna ask that. So, I mean.
There's this idea that, you know, when for livestock, you wanna know, how much antibiotic you're using per kilo of livestock. But of course, you can't know how, what weight of live. Stock is on a farm, you know, you're not gonna go and weigh every animal.
So it, it's a sort of become a standardised way of working it out. So you, you, if you know their number of head of cattle, you make an assumption about the, the, the, Distribution of ages on that farm. And so you come up with an average that the average livestock unit is 425 kg.
Of course, on some farms, that's gonna be over. On a Jersey farm, that will be, it'll be lower than that on a, on a, Fleckve farm, it's gonna be higher than that, but that's, that's how they've done it, because it just, you know, you have to do something when you're calculating averages. So, they've, they've, they've made assumptions about the average weight of a cow, and then they've, divided the total mass of antibiotic sold by the weight of weight, assumed weight of cow on that farm.
Does that make sense? Yes, I, I can never get my head round what they, what they've done and, and I can sort of understand why it's trying to make it, I suppose, a blanket. Blanket sort of stat isn't it across all different types of types of farm, but it's, it's complicated because lots of people use different ways of measuring antibiotic usage.
So I, so I suppose I don't know whether you agree, Rachel, but, pick one and and try and stick with it to to sort of benchmark all your clients. I think for for within practise it's fine to use your whatever you like within your practise. I mean, these things have been used for international comparison and national comparisons, so that's why it's important, but we, I suppose we can do what we like as long as we're consistent with ourselves.
So we've just got a final few questions that we'll just try to get through quickly. Why dole CLs not respond to treatment as well as E. Coli?
If I knew that, I'd be. leading clubsella researcher. I, I mean, I think, I think they, they produce some very nasty toxins, is, is probably the answer, but I actually don't know, because they're not adaptive pathogens.
So why they can become chronic or be difficult to treat, I really don't know. OK, I think, yeah, it's one of those that keeps on, keeps on grumbling on and can be pose a real problem to a lot of farms. So, final two questions, what are the main reasons for culling a problem mastitis cow?
So, we tend to go, what you have to bear in mind is what information you have. So often the information we have is clinical cases, so if they've had. More than 3 clinical cases, in a, in a lactation, or if they're chronic high cell count, then they'll go.
I'd add to that if there's palpable pathology in the udder. So if you can feel scar tissue and lumps and bumps, then you know that probably your chance of curing hair is very low. Likewise, obviously, 3/4s cow loses points.
But yeah, if you, if you have all of those things and then you culture a stuff. Oh yes, obviously, that's gonna, you, you're gonna inform your client that that's a low chance of, of cure as well. But generally speaking, chronic high cell count, recurrent clinical cases.
Brilliant. And just to finish up with a question from Jenny, are these treatment control plans transferable to to beef systems at all? Do you find many mastotis problems within beef herds, and can you use any of this information you discussed tonight to help?
Yeah, I, I, I would hope most beef herds would, would not have, mastitis problems. Beef cows should be extremely resilient. They're, they're suckling, so they're being, you know, .
Out regularly. So if you've got a mastitis problem in a beef herd, you probably need to, to go and have a look at why. So the commonest one would possibly be some mastitis spread by flies.
But yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, be expecting to see a lot of fasciitis in beef cats. Apart from anything else, it's very hard to, to strip out her to treat her. So it's practically much more difficult, to get involved.
Fantastic. Well, we'll, we'll call it a close there. Thank you so much to everybody who has joined us and asked, asked some really excellent questions tonight.
If you've got any more questions after this webinar, you can always get in touch with BCVA and we can point you in the right direction for the resources that, Rachel's covered tonight. And also, if you want to find out more about the Quarter pro, then if you go into our webinar, webinar vet back catalogue, we've actually got a webinar. In there that was recorded about 18 months ago on Quarter Pro so you can find out more information there.
And obviously, Rachel's webinar from last week on on Farm Culture will be available as well. So thanks again, everybody, and please join us for our next clinical club, which will be on the 22nd of June, when we've got Jenny Hull taking us through the vet year for the suckler beef herd. Same formats tonight, plenty of opportunity for interaction and questions.
So I just want to say thanks again to everybody. Thank you very much to Rachel for getting some great comments coming back in, saying a great presentation and thanking you very much. So I hope to see you soon, everybody, for our next webinars and our clinical clubs.
And in the meantime, good night and take care.
