Abstract
Mastitis is one of the most prevalent production diseases affecting the dairy cattle industry worldwide. Its occurrence is associated with direct and indirect losses and expenditures. When estimating the cost of mastitis to the dairy industry the cost of the control programmes must be added. The direct losses of mastitis are the only costs obvious to the farmer. The difference between the costs of mastitis on one side and the benefits of mastitis control on the other side will give us a picture of the economic efficacy of the mastitis control programme. Continuing education of the farmer is needed for better mastitis control programmes. This article is an attempt to review briefly all relevant factors included in the economics of bovine mastitis and to illustrate the authors' view of some of the costs.
Highlights
Mastitis is defined as an inflammation of the mammary gland
It is even more difficult to quantify the losses associated with sub-clinical mastitis, because they are not visible to farm owners
The economics of mastitis needs to be addressed at the farm or herd level and depends on local, regional, epidemiological, managerial and economic conditions
Summary
Mastitis is defined as an inflammation of the mammary gland. It is a complex disease involving many factors, which is mainly caused by bacteria and there is no simple model that encompasses all possible facets[25,64]. A significant part of the economic cost of mastitis is related to culling losses[1,6,10,11,14,16,23,24,25,28, 33,36,38,39,41,43,46,48,49,52,66,73,74,75,78] of cows that have or have had clinical mastitis[1,3,4,5,16,33,41] or elevated SCC3,5,66, and the increased expenditure associated with their replacement . The cost of other procedures is calculated in the same way as for normal treatment or teat disinfection
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