Sand is clean, cool and comfortable but...

摘要

Environmental mastitis is now the most important cause of clinical mastitis on UK dairy farms with the bedding acting as the reservoir of infection for the organisms concerned. Vet Jonathan Reader from the Kingfisher Veterinary Practice, Somerset, looks at the increasing potential for sand in the management of high yielding dairy cows. Mastitis will never go away. As cows are pushed harder, mastitis rates will remain a problem although the balance of power has shifted. Contagious organisms such as Staph aureus have been replaced by environmental organisms such as E coli and Strep uberis as the main causes of mastitis in this country. These environmental organisms breed and multiply in the damp warm layers of bedding and are transferred onto the teat when cows are housed. At milking these organisms are then transferred into the teat canal to set up a new intramammary infection.