Bulk milk disease screening (BMDS) services allow farmers to screen their herd for the common viruses, bacteria and parasites that can affect dairy herd performance. The cost of the Glanbia service is €50 for eight diseases, or around €6 per disease.

Screening the herd for diseases by this method is simple and no extra effort or animal handling is required. The bulk milk sample collected by the tanker driver is used to test for the diseases and results are sent out in the post. All results are graded as negative, low positive or high positive.

Some diseases will be more active at certain times of the year and it is recommended to screen the herd three times – early, mid and late lactation (a fourth screening in December is also offered to autumn-calving herds).

This repeated testing provides reassurance that the disease control measures in place are working. It will also show up any change in herd disease status, so that action can be taken before herd performance is affected.

Value

  • Early warning system for disease entry into the herd.
  • Reassurance that the disease control measures in place are working.
  • Every herd is different – control only the diseases that need to be controlled in your herd.

    • Vaccinations and wormers can be expensive and their administration causes a lot of stress to man and beast. Where they are needed though, treatments to control diseases will pay back multiples in improved herd performance against letting diseases become a blocker of milk production and fertility.

    Every herd is different. Every herd will have different diseases that need to be controlled. Spend your money and effort wisely on controlling the diseases that are active in your herd. Disease screening will let you know what to prioritise.

    Lessons learned from BMDS

  • Due to its simplicity and low cost, there has been a big uptake of BMDS across the Glanbia area, with more than half of GIIL milk suppliers now using the service to help them control the diseases in their herd.
  • Liverfluke is widespread in dairy herds across the Glanbia area – almost 90% of herds are testing positive. Improvement: while the land still has high fluke burdens, the animals on these farms are now showing reduced levels of infection due to better fluke control measures being taken.
  • Neospora is also more widespread than had been thought – active in almost 40% of herds. Many farmers are now testing individual animals by milk recording or blood sample, so that the diseased animals can be identified and managed to control disease spread.

    • Neospora

    This parasitic infection can cause abortion, reduced fertility or stillborn calves.

    Abortions will often happen around four to seven months of pregnancy, but early embryo losses due to Neospora may show up as empty cows without the visible abortion.

    As part of its life cycle, the parasite’s intermediate host is the dog (or fox). The infection is spread from dogs to cattle by faecal contamination of pasture or animal feed. Dogs become infected by eating contaminated afterbirths or aborted foetal material from an infected cow.

    Heifers born from carrier cows will also be carriers of the disease as they become infected during pregnancy. These heifers are more likely to abort when they become pregnant or will produce another carrier animal if they do not abort.

    Neospora does not affect milk quality, but can have a significant effect on fertility and therefore farm profitability

    The wills and won’ts of BMDS

    BMDS won’t:

  • Control the diseases, but identifies which diseases need to be controlled in your herd.
  • Give results for individual animals, but will show where further individual animal testing is of value.
  • Identify the diseases that are present in the dairy youngstock, but will show which cow diseases are active on the farm.

    • BMDS will:

  • Allow herd performance to be optimised by identifying the diseases that need to be controlled in your herd.
  • Provide an early warning system for disease entry into the herd.
  • Give reassurance that the disease control measures in place are working.

    • Review and planning

    Topics to be considered in an autumn review of herd health performance include fertility, mastitis, lameness and calf health. Thought-provoking questions jump to mind on each of the above – for example, could the herd fertility performance have been better this year? Are there more cows empty than you would have liked?

    This should be followed by the likely causes and the benefits of improvement in this area before moving on to planning for improvement next year.

    Plan for a healthier, more productive herd in 2015. Using the review questions above, plan to improve across the different areas of herd health, with suggestions provided for the important areas of herd health and their value to farm profitability.