Reducing antibiotic use through on farm culture & selective treatment of clinical mastitis
Reducing antibiotic usage in dairy farms by using selective treatment of clinical mastitis after using a new on farm culture test kit (MastDecide)
Show MoreMastitis is one of the biggest reasons for antibiotic usage in dairy farming. While progress has been made in the industry to reduce the preventive use of dry cow antibiotics, little has been achieved in reducing the use for lactating cow treatment of clinical mastitis.
Since research has been carried out looking at spontaneous cure rates of different types of mastitis, showing that most mild or moderate gram negative infections cure spontaneously, there is increasing interest by farmer’s in identifying those cases early via on farm test systems and then not giving antibiotics to these cases. Therefore reducing antibiotic use and saving the cost of the drug and waste milk.
This field lab is to understand whether under UK farm conditions a new test (MastDecide) system, which has previous had very little direct farmer testing, can be practically used by farmers as an effective tool to significantly reduce antibiotic usage without affecting animal welfare and mastitis outcome parameters. While sensitivity and specificity of this test have recently been established under controlled conditions there is no work published on the suitability of such a system in real farm conditions.
The group will also evaluate the general concept of on farm culture and selective treatment in more detail, comparing cows treated according to culture results with those treated conventionally with regards to their mastitis outcome parameters. The long term plan will also be to evaluate the time and cost investment by the farmer in using on farm testing and if they are willing to adopt the technique long term. We will be considering via group discussion the usability and accuracy of the test and if it is aiding early detection and targeted treatment of individual animals.