Mastitis - making the right deciston

摘要

As an increasing number of mastitis case fail to respond to conventional 'three tube therapy', specialist cattle vet Andrew Biggs looks at the options to improve the cure rate. Probably the question I get asked with increasing regularity is: "Are antibiotic tubes not working as well as they used to?" Well all I can say in response is to pose another question: "Are we asking more of our treatments than we used to?" When treating mastitis two decades ago everybody was happy if the milk looked good enough to go back in the tank but also to be clear of the bacteria that caused the mastitis and, just for good measure, to get the cow back to an acceptable cell count again. This is quite a tall order to clear all three hurdles sometimes. Quite often we need to treat more effectively to get a good response; sometimes the cow is beyond repair and has an infection that can't be cured; and sometimes she was going to get better without treatment in any case.