Udder Health without Dry Cow Antibiotics: The Potential of Shortening orOmitting the Dry Period

摘要

Preventive use of dry cow antibiotics is not allowed in several European countries among which the Netherlands. Development of a management system without use of preventive dry cow antibiotics justifies re-evaluation of other management measures withrespect to udder health, such as reducing the length of the dry period (DP). Shortening or omitting the DP has been hypothesized to affect udder health in dairy cows, although reported effects are ambiguous (Van Hoeij et al., 2016). Other factors that improved energy balance (EB) such as dietary energy level, may improve udder health. Additionally, to our knowledge, all studies on the effect of dry period length (DPL) on udder health were carried out using cows that were treated with dry cow antibiotics at drying off.