Mastitis in dairy cows can take a toll on both production and cow health, but understanding the root causes allows you to manage it more effectively and reduce its overall impact. In this post, I’ll continue the discussion on the cost of mastitis by exploring how to catch it earlier and reduce its impact on cow health.
Key Questions to Answer
- Where are the cases of mastitis coming from in my herd? Are they concentrated in certain cow pens?
- Are the milkers identifying mastitis before testing confirms it?
- Are there seasonal patterns affecting the rate of mastitis in cows?
If you haven’t been following along, you can catch up by checking out the other articles in the mastitis series on the mastitis tag page.
Understanding Your Data
To get a clearer picture of what’s happening, it helps to analyze the animal health data you have available. The more detailed your records, the better you can identify patterns and root causes. In the video below, I review a report that includes:
- Somatic cell count (SCC) greater than 1 million
- Mastitis cases reported by the milkers
- Cows sorted by their calving month and days in milk
By combining this information, you can identify how frequently mastitis in cows is occurring and whether there’s an opportunity to catch it earlier. You can also spot differences between fresh cows and those further along in their lactation cycle. Seasonal effects on mastitis become clearer when you track and compare data over time.
Managing Dairy Cow Health with Better Insights
By analyzing data using drug tracking tools, you can examine reported cases of mastitis by month, helping to identify seasonal patterns and understand which treatments are most effective. This can help you recognize seasonal trends and identify potential problem areas.
Sorting the data by cow pen can help identify whether certain pens have higher mastitis rates, allowing you to target management strategies more effectively. If you spot a pattern, you can visually inspect the pen environment to see if any factors—like bedding, ventilation, or crowding—are contributing to the issue.
Take Action
Watch the video below and reach out if you have any comments or questions about managing mastitis in dairy cows:
This post is part 3 of a 3-part series on analyzing mastitis. To get notified when new articles are published, subscribe and select immediate notifications.