Why it is Time to Focus on Microbiology

Why it is Time to Focus on Microbiology

Microbiology may become an important component of your milk quality consult as dry cow regulations become tighter. Not only that, but identifying pathogens helps us, as your vets, to target treatment and identify important causative factors on farm.

The New Zealand vet council has recently drafted new regulations around the use of dry cow therapy. While not yet mandatory, this brings into focus the importance of evidence-based, cow level decision making, and highlights and opportunity for vets and farmers to routinely utilise microbiology in mastitis management.

The Proposal:

In the future, blanket use of dry cow therapy may no longer be acceptable, and dry-off prescriptions undertaken by vets may need to be based specific documentation, including:  

·         Individual cow SCC records (herd test data)

·         Clinical mastitis history (your record keeping)

·         Diagnostic testing (microbiology)

·         Treatment records used on farm

·         Culling decisions related to mastitis

·         Evidence of ongoing management of udder health

Simply put -bulk milk SCC may no longer suffice as justification for blanket dry cow therapy. This aligns with our industry goals of reducing antibiotic use, improving milk quality and preventing resistance.

What You Can Do

As your prescribing vets, we need your help to ensure that we have as much information as possible when making decisions around what dry cow therapy is best for your farm. This includes:

·         Regular herd testing

·         Clear and consistent record keeping

·         Understanding what pathogens are relevant to mastitis cases occurring on farm.

This is where microbiology is becoming increasingly important. By culturing milk samples from cows with clinic

al mastitis over the course of a season, we can start to build a picture of the specific bugs present on your farm -something that may become essential for selective dry cow therapy. With calving kicking off, now is a good time to begin to take samples; even if you just keep them in the freezer and never submit them, you will have the piece of mind knowing that they are there should a major issue arise.

What will be required at dry-off?

To summarise, it is looking like we will be needing justification for every cow receiving dry cow antibiotics. This may include:

• SCC or RMT evidence

• Culture results where available

• Clinical history

• The rationale for treating or not treating

Having culture results strengthens our ability to make the right call around selective antimicrobials and keeps everyone on the right side of regulation.

Milk sampling at FVM

All milk samples submitted to us are processed by a professional lab in Hamilton, meaning that the results are accurate and timely. We recommend this method for the best possible information. However, if you use another lab, we are still here to help -we encourage you to share the results with us so that we can provide veterinary interpretation and help with any decision making. Alternatively, Mastatest machines are available for on farm testing for an easy and cost-effective way to identify mastitis pathogens and treat them accordingly.

Please give us a ring to discuss any of this further -we are here to help and can point you in the right direction in terms of what testing you should be doing, and how you should be approaching treatment.