Mastitis in Dairy Animals

Mastitis in Dairy Animals

Mastitis is one of the world’s leading problems in animals, especially cows. So, in today’s post, we discuss Mastitis in Dairy Animals, especially the diagnosis and treatment of mastitis in cattle, sheep, goats, and buffalo.

Mastitis in Dairy Animals: Overview

  • Mastitis can result in changes in milk, milk, and cow or any mixture.
  • The best way to detect mastitis early is – when milk is sucked at a deeper level, changes in color, and consistency can be seen.
  • It is important to observe and be quick, but later or more severe mastitis cases are detected.
  • Mastitis can be treated with intramuscular or systemic antibiotics or a combination of both.
  • Intramural medications are best for single-quarter mild mastitis, while systemic treatment is better for more severe cases or multiple quarter infections.
  • An SOP that is available to all staff should be developed to treat mastitis with antibiotics.
  • Treatment failure is usually caused by insufficient antibiotics that are given for a very short time. However, not all cows respond to treatment. Identify these cows before you waste money on antibiotics.

Diagnosis of Mastitis in Dairy Animals

Udder testing and testing cows before drinking milk is still the best way to detect early cases of clinical mastitis. This is because a change in milk is often the first sign of mastitis. When the milk is drawn to a dark surface, a change in milk (clot, flakes, discoloration, or consistency) can be observed. Changes in milk are related to physical biology, with a tendency to become more common in mastitis due to staphylococcus aureus. In contrast, straw-colored milk is usually associated with E. coli. There is a lot of overlap, and other factors must be taken into account when deciding.

The forecast is easy to check and does not require special equipment, so it is available to every stock person. However, this may include less than 10% of the breastfeeding routine, mainly due to the time it takes.

Visual inspection

Visual inspection and weaning before weaning should be part of all breastfeeding routines. Mastitis causes swelling, redness, stiffness, heat, and pain in the intestines, which can often be detected despite a cursory examination.

The difficulty in relying on bowel examination is that a late change in the process can be identified as the first line of identification for mastitis, so there is considerable damage by the time the disease is detected. Later identification also means delayed treatment, which is less effective than early treatment and increases the risk of disease transmission.

Inline filters

Many plants have mastitis detectors in long tubes. They can be helpful if checked after breastfeeding. However, before the infection is detected in the milk tank directly from the milk in the parlors, inline filters can also reduce the efficiency of the milking machine by allowing fluid and airflow through the milk length tube. It is a common practice to check the screens of the feeding plant at the end of lactation to stop it, but it should not be used as a method of early detection of mastitis.

Mastitis

Mastitis alters the concentration of ions in milk, which may lead to a change in conductivity of milk that may occur in 24 to 36 hrs the onset of visible symptoms. This has led to the development of meters running in the direction of the cow and line. First of all, there is not a single threshold. Different cows have different transmissions, so to detect mastitis, you need to discover a change in conductivity, which requires multiple tests. Second, the entire movement of the cow is not sensitive enough – changes in the affected quarter could easily fall into the swamp due to a lack of change in the other three areas. Therefore individual quarterly tests are required. This means that for a herd of 100 cows, each milk requires 400 conductivity tests. Therefore, a dedicated computer program is necessary to handle all the data to monitor the conductivity.

Grading Mastitis in Dairy Animals

After diagnosing mastitis, identify the severity of mastitis because it is important to determine what treatment to give.

  1. Mild mastitis: is an unusual symptom of lactation with little evidence of a change in the size of the chick and no systemic symptoms such as lethargy and loss of appetite.
  2. Moderate Mastitis: As the duct changes, so does the milk. These changes can be slow or rapid. There may be minor systemic changes, such as a reduction in feed volume. Over the long term, both types of mastitis can persist, leading to chronic inflammation and damage in the younger (chronic mastitis).
  3. Acute Mastitis: Significant changes in the nipple and milk are associated with major systemic effects in cows, such as fever, loss of appetite, depression, trauma, dehydration, and loss of appetite. These cows need immediate veterinary attention.

Purpose of Treating Mastitis in Dairy Animals

There are two purposes of treating mastitis:

1) Return milk to normal with acceptable cell count so that it can be resold

2) Getting rid of all the germs especially bacteria

Mild mastitis can be cured in a few days without treatment or with a quarter massage and hand removal. However, bacteria can still be present.

Treatment of Mastitis in Dairy Animals

  • Treatment with intramuscular antibiotics is the basis for the treatment of most mastitis

Antibiotics

These are the basis of most treatment regimens. There are two options: intramuscular antibiotics, classical mastitis tubes, and systemic antibiotics given intramuscularly or subcutaneously.

Intermittent antibiotics should be the first-line treatment for cows with mild, uncomplicated mastitis in the same quarter. When more than a quarter are affected, systemic antibiotics should be used when the toddler changes or the cow becomes ill. Aggregate therapy, along with both systemic and intramuscular antibiotics, may increase the rate of bacteriological treatment but should only be used based on your veterinarian’s advice.

Non-steroids (NSAIDs)

These are medicines like aspirin that reduce the inflammation and pain associated with mastitis. They are very effective in severe cases of mastitis, but now there is growing evidence of their effectiveness in mild to moderate cases. Cows treated with intramuscular antibiotics and NSAIDs had better cell numbers, better cure rates, and better fertility than cows treated with antibiotics alone.

Failure of treatment

There are four reasons why this may not be the case.

  1. Wrong antibiotics. The organisms that cause mastitis did not die from the selected treatment.
  2. There are not enough antibiotics at the site of infection for a long time – although the bacteria have been killed, not all of them come back after the treatment is over.
  3. Re-infection – The therapy works, but the cow gets re-infection.
  4. Minor damage to the young can prevent the antibiotic from coming into contact with the bacteria in large quantities.
  • More about the failure of treatment

  • Most intramuscular antibiotics are often effective against common mastitis pathogens. Developed, but some have a narrow spectrum. Systemic antibiotics have a close view. Therefore, the first line of medicines to be used should be based on a thorough understanding of the key pathogens in your form. This is important for the development of your mastitis SOP. Your biologist’s input is needed to determine the most appropriate antibiotics to use on your farm. Proper antibiotic failure is a rare cause of poor response to treatment.
  • The goal of antibiotic treatment for mastitis is to get the cow back to get the milk as soon as possible. Small courses with low doses of antibiotics. This makes it less likely to kill all bacteria. Prolonged treatment is more effective but more expensive. Still, it should be considered in cases where chronic cases are a problem, and when the rate of treatment appearing after the standard course is lower than expected. Again, changes in the length of antibiotic therapy need to be part of your SOP for the treatment of your mastitis, and veterinary advice is very important.
  • For some cows, no matter how many antibiotics you use, the chances of a cure are slim. For example, a 5-year-old cow, which is treated with milk in 150 days, which has 2,000,000 cells/ml of SCC due to staff aureus infection, should be addressed. There is a 1% chance. The biggest reason for failure in these cases is that antibiotics never reach the bacteria in large numbers. Affected cows must be identified and removed from the herd.

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