Ruegg conducted a study to identify the mastitis pathogens present in Wisconsin using samples from 51 dairies. Participating farms were required to forestrip during milking as forestripping identifies 50% of mastitis infections. 

The most common pathogens found, in order, were:

1. No-growth – bacteria not present when the case was found and sampled. This means the cow’s immune response successfully killed the pathogens, or cured the infection.
2. E.coli – Environmental bacteria, cow’s immune system usually successfully kills, thereby eliminating the need for treatment.
3. Environmental strep – Requires antibiotic treatment to effectively prevent spread of subclinical cases.
4. Klebsiella

25% of mastitis cases were no-growth, and therefore non-treatable. 17% of cases were bacteria that don’t respond to antimicrobial therapy. That’s 42% of mastitis cases that don’t need antibiotic treatments. This poses the question, are we over treating cows on our farms?

In order to avoid unnecessary use of antibiotics, we need to identify what pathogen is causing the infection. Aside from ethical issues of overusing antibiotics, there is also the cost issue — keeping in mind that over 80% of antibiotics used on dairies are for control and treatment of mastitis.

Testing is the only way to determine whether or not that cow in your parlor exhibiting mastitis symptoms has a pathogen meriting the cost of an antibiotic treatment. Fortunately we have many testing options, including on-farm culturing. Vet clinics and reference labs also handle milk culturing. 

Proper Sampling Technique for culture or other tests:

1. Wear gloves
2. Use a sterile container 
3. Pre-dip, dry teat, (make sure you forestrip)use alcohol scrub with 2 hands and THOROUGHLY clean  teat end
4. Take sample without cross contamination
5. Immediately cool or freeze

If performing on-farm culturing, start as soon as possible. If sending to a lab, cool immediately to prevent incubation of other bacteria.

Testing milk samples to identify pathogens needing antibiotic treatments can typically reduce mastitis treatment costs 40%. How much would a 40% reduction in your treatment costs look like?

According to Dr. Ruegg, the industry controlled mastitis by implementing 5 simple steps:

1. Effective Teat Dipping: 97% of farms dip, but many not effectively

• Coverage is 75% of the teat skin
• Post milking teat dipping

2. Dry Cow Therapy: All quarters of all  cows at the end of every lactation

• Treats subclinical infections present at the end of lactation
• Protects  cow during  vulnerable period when she still has milk in her udder

3. Appropriate Treatment of Clinical Cases

• Record and monitor all cases

4. Culling Cows Chronically Infected: Make a decision early on

• Remember cows can have a second career as a beef cow

5. Regular Milking Machine Maintenance

• Stable teat end vacuum

By following these steps, as well as proactively reducing exposure to environmental bacteria, your dairy should have defeated mastitis, right? Maybe not. Our pathogen targets have significantly changed in an attempt to survive.

When Dr. Ruegg finished vet school in 1984, she had been taught that there were 3 types of bacteria that caused mastitis infections; staph aureus, strep ag, and e.Coli. And that was it.

As dairy producers, we all know that today those 3 mastitis-causing bacteria are not all there is. The combination of bacterial evolution, and the way our cows have changed have resulted in an entirely different and diverse group of mastitis pathogens today, than those present 25 years ago. Bacteria have changed, herds have changed, and the way we effectively manage mastitis needs to change.

Consider your mastitis control program. Has it changed, how? How could it evolve to be more effective?   With the diverse mastitis pathogens present in our herds today, identifying bacteria through culturing before treating is becoming increasingly important for effective treatment.

 Using technology and behavior patterns to interpret standing and lying patterns is one area that looks promising for the industry.

Behavioral Patterns and Mastitis

Lying behavior patterns are known to influence the risk of mastitis infections. Cows that lie down too soon after milking don’t achieve closure of the teat canal before potential exposure to mastitis-causing bacteria. To encourage cows to remain standing, most dairies have fresh feed immediately accessible after milking.

The optimum time DeVries found for cows to spend standing after milking was about an hour. Cows that stood less than 45 minutes after milking were at an increased risk for mastitis, and interestingly, cows that remained standing for an extended period of time, 1.5 to 2.5 hours after milking, were at a more significant risk for mastitis than those that lie down immediately.

Behavioral Patterns and Lameness

DeVries stated that, in addition to mastitis, lameness is the top condition challenging our dairy cattle.                                                                               

While it’s optimal for cows to spend half their day lying, excessive lying of 14.5 hours or more a day and extended lying bouts of more than 90 minutes were associated with increased odds of severe lameness.

Excessive standing behavior around the time of transition is heavily correlated to mid-lactation sole lesions and ulcers, which take 6 – 12 weeks to develop. These issues track back to an event during the transition period in cows with excessive standing times, particularly in cows that spent high amounts of time perching (standing with 2 feet in the stall, 2 in the alley). Many stall design solutions can be done to curb the number of cows perching, including widening stalls and moving neck rails forward and higher.

Take-Homes

DeVries take home messages on detecting and preventing mastitis and lameness through behavioral patterns were:

1. Behavior can be used to identify dairy cattle experiencing or at risk for illness.
2. Monitor cows with excessive amounts of standing or lying time. Visual detection can be hard, technology can help.
3. Interpreting behavior patterns can suggest housing and management changes that can positively alter behavioral patterns that have negative effects.

As a producer, you have to ask if cow monitoring technology is practical for use in your commercial setting. Cow activity systems to track heats are common on dairies today, and many are developing into tools to monitor other health concerns.

Legend Track A Cow, ANIMART’s heat detection system, goes beyond alerting producers to cows in heat. Legend pedometers have the ability to detect the difference between when the cow is standing and lying. The system generates standing/lying ratios, identifying serious deviations from the norm.  

Access to this information gives dairy producers the power to investigate why cows are spending excessive time standing or lying, both on a herd basis and individual cow basis. Correctly interpreting the data can alert producers to health issues, such as mastitis, as well as problems that could create further health issues, such as overcrowding, inadequate bunk space or stall size.

For more information on Legend, click here, or contact Joe Stevens, ANIMART Reproduction Specialist at 920.382.5951 or joes@animart.com.

1. Manure Storage Facilities and Collection Structures
2. Dairy Bull and Cow Behavior/Worker Positioning
3. Electrical Systems
4. Skid-Steer Loader Operation
5. Tractor Operation
6. Guarding of Power Take-Offs (PTOs)
7. Guarding of other Power Transmission and Functional Components
8. Hazardous Energy Control while performing servicing and maintenance on equipment
9. Hazard Communication
10. Confined Spaces
11. Horizontal Bunker Silos
12. Noise

OSHA compliance officers will be conducting comprehensive inspections on 12 farms throughout the state. Farms are eligible for OSHA inspection and enforcement if they have had more than 10 non-family employees during the last 12 months OR had an active temporary labor camp during the last 12 months, exempting small farming operations.

Hazard Communication

Citations for hazard communication are common during OSHA inspections on dairy farms. Hazard communication refers to the hazard of serious chemical ingestion, absorption, splash, fire and other hazards in existence around chemicals including but not limited to; teat dips, pharmaceuticals, footbaths and sanitation products.

In order to meet OSHA compliance and minimize risk around hazardous chemicals, employees should be trained in the handling and properties of chemicals. Chemical inventory and Material Data Safety Sheets (MSDSs) should be kept on the farm and easily accessible to locations where hazardous chemicals are used and stored.

OSHA citations come with hefty fines, so it is best to take a proactive approach. Many states offer consultation services, and extension agents can also be a valuable resource.

The need for safety and health training for employees goes beyond OSHA visits. Farm workers are exposed to many potentially dangerous situations, and following OSHA guidelines for the 12 common hazardous areas can greatly reduce your farm’s risk of accidents or fatalities and increase productivity.

For more information on the Local Emphasis Program or OSHA regulations, visit www.osha.gov

Recently Dr. Nordlund, University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, hosted several meetings on improving ventilation in calf barns using positive pressure ventilation tubes. The discussion focused around housing factors associated with decreased respiratory disease in calves.

These factors include:

• Deep bedding to provide nesting
• Solid panels between pens to reduce calf-to-calf contact
• Decreased bacterial counts in pen air

Decreased bacterial counts in pen air can be achieved through the use of tube ventilation systems.

Even barns with natural ventilation need to have circulating wind to move fresh air through the building and have the thermal buoyancy of warm air (body heat) when the air is still. Two problems can occur:

1. Natural winds tend to be infrequent
2. Calves do not generate enough heat to drive air out an open ridge and have cooler fresh air enter through eaves

Unlike old tube ventilation systems, which mainly recirculated barn air, the present concept of ventilation tubes is to introduce fresh air from outside. According to Dr. Nordlund, the main components of the modern positive pressure ventilation system are:

• Fans: Should have ability to recirculate the air inside barn about 4 times per hour.
• Tubes: Should be 1.3 to 1.5 times the diameter of fan.
• Air Exit Speed (from tube): Should provide constant discharge of air and have good inflation along the length of the tube.
• Tube Holes: Should provide fresh air to calves without creating draft on calves.

The number of tubes installed in the calf barn should correlate with the number of rows of stalls and barn width. The general rule of thumb is one tube for every two stalls and one tube for every 30 feet of building width.

Tubes should be placed over the center alley with the holes pointing towards the rows of individual pens at approximately 5 and 7 o’clock.

Dairyland Initiative has an excel spreadsheet available to aid in optimal placement, design and sizing of tubes for any size calf barn.

Recently I attended the National Mastitis Council Annual Meeting in Florida. One of the sessions I attended was “Dairy Trade Players: Past and Future” by Jay Woldvogel of Dairy Farmers of America. Jay has more than 20years experience in the global milk market and leads DFA’s strategic planning process. Here’s a little on what I learned from his session:

1.)    The U.S. marketplace is no longer constrained to our borders. 15% of the US milk supply last year was sold to international markets. The foreign marketplace is so too large to ignore, it would be like taking 15% of our milk market away tomorrow. The resulting crash in prices would be catastrophic to the dairy industry.

2.)    Globalization has quietly become the reality over the last 10 years. One factor of the increasing markets is the new patterns of emerging technologies. Technologies are not developing slowly and following the same steps as developing countries did in the past. They are skipping entire steps in their development processes. Developing countries don’t go from not having any phones, to running wires and putting in land lines. They simply skip that phase by putting up cell towers, making their technologies equal to ours in one step.

Their citizens also skip steps. They don’t gradually increase their consumption of nutritious food; they quickly go from not enough food to demanding quality nutritious foods. No longer are they satisfied with products such as non-fat milk powder, they are demanding quality dairy products.

3.)    Another factor that the US is no longer in control of is our pricing. China has 22% of the world’s people, 7% of the arable land and 3% of the water. India has 18% of the world’s people. These countries cannot supply their own food. They need inputs of quality nutritious food for as long as can be seen.

4.)    Traditionally, we have not supplied the world markets with the products they desire; rather we supply them with the products we already produce. They wished for low-fat dry milk powder while we only produced non-fat. This must change to give them the products they demand. The world now wants standards of 400,000 SCC or less and many of our farms fail to meet it. Another big issue we are not yet up to par with is drug residues in both meat and milk. Unless we proactively take measures to meet foreign demands and standards, we run the risk of losing this vital market.  

These are all issues we, as an industry, are facing. We must demand that these issues be addressed. As an industry we need to be diligent about eliminating drug residues, lowering SCCs and producing products that are desired in foreign markets. This will make us better managers and producers of a better product. We must demand that the industry starts tuning in to the world as our marketplace. The better we can produce products to fit the growing world market, the better we will thrive as an industry.

What is makes a “home sweet home” for heifers? One thing in common all heifers need is good air quality. No matter the season or type of housing, superior air quality is key to a healthy respiratory system, i.e., less pneumonia.

When checking for good air quality, keep in mind what area to look at. Consider the height where the calves are breathing, along with where in the pen you are checking, in the back of the pen or in the front of the pen? Where do they spend the most time? Where do they have their meals? Just like newborn infants, newborn calves spend the majority of their time sleeping. So get down to their level and check it out. Ask yourself, would you want to breathe that air all day and night?

Now that you’re on their level, what are you checking for? Pretty simple really — clean air. Quality clean air won’t irritate your airways or make your eyes water. Air quality is especially important for newborns; pens should be clean, dry and draft-free. A draft can be defined as air moving greater than 60 feet/min. If your calves are in a calf barn, the DCHA states that during hot weather indoor ventilation rates should be 100 cfm (cubic feet per min) but for mild to cold weather ventilation should drop to 50 and 15 cfu.

Remember, the goal of good ventilation is to improve respiratory health by keeping down the amount of bacteria and irritants in the air.

If we all agree that maintaining good air quality is a common goal for all heifers, what changes as they grow older?

There is an expression, one size fits all. Well that may work for some things, but just like kids growing out of clothes, the housing of young stock changes as they grow.

As heifers mature, we need to make adjustments in their housing. Calves less than two months old require at least 24 square feet, pens with solid sides and an open front and back are ideal. From two to four months plan on providing heifers with 34 square feet and from 4 to 6 month olds they should have 40 square feet per individual heifer.

The bedding or surface that young stock need as they grow will also change. Calves less than two months of age need extra bedding, especially in the winter, in comparison to their older siblings. The rule of thumb is to provide newborns with 6 to 10 inches of dry bedding. Some people refer to the nesting score scale, which ranges from 1 to 3. 

            1=legs entirely visible when lying down

            2=legs partially visible when lying down

            3=legs generally not visible when lying down (ideal for newborns in the winter)

Earlier I suggested you breathe the air you have the calves breath. Now I also suggest kneeling on the bedding, if you dare! When you kneel on the bedding, you should be able to kneel for at least 15 seconds without getting your knees wet. If it takes less than 15 seconds to feel the wet (and cold) underneath you, please add some bedding; she will be lying there more than 15 seconds. 

The new DCHA Gold Standards has recommendations on shelter for older calves and suggested dimensions for resting space and free stall space, check it all out at www.calfandheifer.org

• The Georgia Poultry Federation was founded in 1950 to advance the industry. At the time meat production was mainly a by-product of egg production.
• Poultry is the largest segment of Georgia agriculture, accounting for 54%. Crops make up 37% and dairy and livestock accounts for 7%.
• 105 counties in Georgia produce more than $1 million of poultry at the farm level, and an average poultry farm could feed 6.3 million people annually.
• 100,000 Georgians are employed in the poultry industry across the state in broiler and fowl processing, breeding, egg packing, hatcheries and feed mills.
• On an average day Georgia produces: 26 million pounds of chicken, 9.2 million table eggs and 7.8 million hatching eggs.
• If Georgia were a country, it would rank 6^th in broiler production, the U.S. would rank first.

While Georgia’s agriculture industry is vastly different from what we experience in the Midwest, we learned we fight similar battles in food safety, input costs, labor and immigration reform, environmental and water regulations, and educating the public and media about agriculture and their food supply.

We also share the fight of feeding the world with land on less than 3% of the world’s surface.  There are 6.4 billion people in the world today, but by 2050 the food supply will have to double or triple to feed the projected 9 billion people. These are challenges that all of agriculture faces and it is important that all sectors work together collaboratively for agriculture to continue to be successful and meet the needs of a growing world population.

Avoiding Residues: Residue violations are often the product of either not waiting the proper withhold time or accidentally milking treated cows into the bulk tank. There are 3 basic principles for avoiding residues; proper diagnosis, record keeping and following established protocols.

Diagnosis: Proper diagnosis of disease or illness requires a hands-on approach. Herd health should be actively monitored, with employees always watching for animals showing signs of sickness.

Proper diagnosis of the animal is essential before treatment should be implemented.

Record Keeping: Thorough records need to be kept of all treatments to avoid under treatment or over treatment and to ensure correct withdrawal periods are followed.

Follow Established Protocols: You should always follow established protocols. Implementation of treatment should always include approved products for the specific problem, be used for the correct treatment duration and follow proper withhold time.

Testing Options: Residue tests are routinely performed by milk haulers per the FDA’s Grade A Pasteurized Milk Ordinace (PMO). The PMO requires haulers to test for at least 4 to 6 specific beta-lactam drugs. Beta-lactam drugs include penicillin, ampicillin, amoxicillin, cloxacillin, cephapirin and ceftiofur, and are the most heavily used drugs on dairies.  Tests used for these routine screenings include the BetaStar, Charm, Delvotest and SNAP tests.

When performing on-farm residue tests for treated cows, it is important to use a test that will check for the product used to treat the animal.

For more information on on-farm residue testing options for your herd, visit: http://www.animart.com/store/residue_testing/

Parasite control comprises a significant portion of the Dairy Calf & Heifer Association’s Gold Standards III, which address animal welfare.

“Heifers are more susceptible to damage from parasite infections than adult cattle, negatively affecting their growth potential and ability to reach breeding size,” says Kevin Tobey, DVM, professional services veterinarian for Novartis Animal Health. “Research shows that deworming heifers three times between birth and breeding provides a significant advantage in pregnancy rates.”

The Gold Standards III emphasizes that effective parasite control will vary considerably between operations. Consider the following when you are setting up your parasite control program: 

• Develop parasite control strategies, incorporating integrated pest management practices, with the herd veterinarian and pest management specialists.
• Follow label directions on all products.
• Avoid using products off-label.
• Train new employees on pest control protocols; review quarterly.
• Inspect cattle weekly for adequacy of parasite control programs.
• Discard expired or contaminated products, paying close attention to proper disposal of insecticides.
• Keep handwritten and/or computerized records of all treatments.

On Novartis’ “Healthy Heifer” website, recommended procedures, like the ones in Gold Standards III, note that specific environmental challenges; herd size; geographic location; pasture and housing dynamics; and prevalence of certain parasite species all play roles in the specific control measures that an individual operation will need to take.

The most common internal parasites affecting dairy cattle are roundworms, flukes, tapeworms and coccidia; and that external parasites of concern include grubs, lice and mites. 

When planning a herd parasite control program, give thought to the following: 

1. Deworming schedule and frequency
2. Pasture management practices; and
3. Pasture diagnostic tests

Source: Dairy Calf & Heifer Association Tip of the Week