Monitoring treatment outcomes: understanding and managing expectations

Abstract

Original aspects: There are a number of ways to assess the outcome of mastitis therapy, from the simple use of the California Milk Test, through assessment of somatic cell counts (SCC), to bacterial culture. Each of these methods has inherent advantages and disadvantages. However, only analysis of SCC responses, combined with lack of recurrence of clinical disease, offer the ability to perform such assessments in a large scale, cost effective and ongoing way. Clinical mastitis and SCC data have been collated from over 600 UK farms. These data have been analysed to establish the range of outcomes that might be expected for treatment of clinical and sub-clinical mastitis in different farm situations and suggest that rates of ‘successful’ treatment of clinical mastitis vary from less than 10% to greater than 70% on different units. This analysis will provide useful information to farmers and advisors when trying to establish and communicate herd performance. This approach is being incorporated into management software widely available in the UK (TotalVet) and internationally (UNIFORM & Dairy Data WareHouse). Communication: Whilst the solution to mastitis control on an individual unit is unlikely to reside in treatment alone, a key aspect of mastitis management is being able to communicate and manage farmer expectations of treatment. As part of the DairyCo Mastitis Control Initiative, software in addition to that outlined above, and based on published research evidence, has been developed to help farmers and their advisers understand the likely outcome of treating sub-clinically affected cows. Analysis of clinical mastitis outcomes on a large number of farms will also help inform farmers and consultants of realistic expectations when treating clinical mastitis.