Use of Diagnostic Laboratory Data to Monitor Mastitis

Abstract

The concept of disease monitoring in veterinary medicine has been discussed for decades. Its importance becomes more apparent as diseases that cause catastrophic illness are less prevalent and the main health challenge facing the animal production industry is low productivity. Disease monitoring schemes are proposed and discarded on a regular basis. In 1975, an international conference on disease monitoring was held. One of the participants, M.E. Hugh-Jones commented: "At any conference on disease monitoring there is usually one articulate, optimistic speaker who has the perfect system. This computerized philosopher's stone is not quite ready, but within a few months it will be working perfectly, turning mercury into gold. Little more is heard of these schemes, but occassionally an older and wiser man emerges to breifly describe his experiences."(1) With this caveat, the objective of this paper is to describe a system for mastitis monitoring. This system was developed using diagnostic laboratory data as the core information. These data integrate with other record systems to provide a method to monitor herd performance over time and allow interpretation of trends to suggest interventions to improve herd performance.