Costs and benefits of mastitis management measures on individual dairy farms

Abstract

Economic optimal decision making with regard to mastitis management aims at a minimization of the total costs of mastitis. These total costs consist of failure costs and preventive costs. Failure costs are costs directly caused by clinical and subclinical mastitis. Preventive costs are costs made to reduce the level of mastitis. Optimal decision making can therefore be seen as a balance between failure costs and preventive costs. The level of failure costs in relation to preventive costs has, however, hardly been studied. In this study, data collected from 120 Dutch dairy farms were used to calculate the farm-specific costs of mastitis (clinical mastitis, subclinical mastitis and preventive measures). Calculations were based on data from milk production recording, farmer recorded information on clinical mastitis and a questionnaire on preventive measures carried out by the farmer. The total costs of mastitis were, on average, € 164 per average cow on the farm per year, of which respectively € 62, € 14 and € 88 were for clinical mastitis, subclinical mastitis and preventive measures.