In every herd, there are cows that should be culled for mastitis reasons but are kept because many farmers don’t have enough replacements after the ‘not in-calf’ cows are sold.

Culling instead of tubing cows is, for me, where the big saving can be made when considering the use of dry cow tubes and sealers.

Expecting a dry cow tube and sealer to fix a chronically infected cow makes no sense. They should be culled from the herd and then you would be making the best decision for your herd and your pocket.

So what is a chronically infected cow? In my book it is any cow that has shown a somatic cell count (SCC) reading over 300,000 to 400,000 cells/ml for three or more milk recordings in the last year.

If you are not milk recording, then the next best measurement you should have written down is the number of times that cow was treated for mastitis over the course of the last year.

If you have treated that cow more than twice for mastitis, then you seriously have to look at putting her on the culling list.

The €13 per cow test

If you use a dry cow tube and sealer, you are looking at spending in the range of €10 to €13 per cow (see Table 1).

For a 100-cow herd, that’s €1,300 at the top end. Many farmers will say if we cure one good milking cow or save one cow from getting infected then you get a good return on investment.

However, the question is are you buying the right product and will it do what it is supposed to do.

If you take a milk sensitivity test to try to pinpoint what type of bacteria/infection is in your herd then you can be more specific about what type of dry cow tube to use.

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If you get a result back which suggests the bug in your cow is resistant to cloxacillin which is the active ingredient in the dry cow tube you are using then there is little or no point in using that type of tube.

We can’t keep firing antibiotics at a problem and expect to go on like that forever. Best practise is to try to use the information available to you to make a better decision and maybe you will decide certain cows don’t need a tube at all.

Options

At this time of the year, dairy farmers all over the country are debating whether to use a dry cow tube or sealers, or both. The fact is that the decision comes down to an individual farm circumstances.

I know farmers who are not using dry cow tubes or sealers but their management and housing of both dry cows and in-calf heifers during the winter is immaculate.

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On top of this, for years they have culled cows at the first sign of a clot. This is not the case on many other farms.

Housing is often old and needs repair or houses and cubicle spaces are over-crowded. Hence, the challenge to keep cows clean and prevent infection is greater.

If we take it down to the simplest level, there are two parts to this story.

A dry cow tube is using an antibiotic to cure an existing infection or an infection that could be inserted into the udder at drying off.

You are using the dry period to allow the cow to cure whatever bacteria or infection is in the udder. If you know the bacteria, then theoretically you should be able to match a dry cow antibiotic to cure that infection.

You might decide to use no dry cow tube for cows with an SCC less than 200,000 cells/ml for at least the last three milk recordings with no clinical cases of mastitis.

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You can only do this (selective dry therapy) if you have a low infection rate (less than 5% recent infections) and less than 2% or 3% clinical cases in the last couple of months.

For individual cow strategies, it all comes down to the information available to you. If you have it, you can use it; if you don’t, then you have to make a blanket herd decision.

As an industry, we need to move towards using more information on individual cows rather than just a blanket strategy just because we don’t know.

The sealer

A sealer is simply a plug in the teat that reinforces an existing teat seal which occurs naturally in all cows.

From talking to farmers this week, the three main sealers farmers are using are Boviseal from Bimeda, Sureseal from Norbrook and Osmonds Teat seal NA.

All do practically the same thing – form a plug in the teat to prevent infection getting in. Sealers should not be massaged into the udder and you have to be very careful not to introduce dirt into the cow when inserting them.

Be clear that the sealer is not an antibiotic and won’t cure any existing infections. Analyse your own situation – how many cows calve down with mastitis each spring and will using sealers improve these results?

Are housing conditions perfect and are you keeping beds clean and dry? Maybe cows are only going to be dry for a maximum of seven or eight weeks and then maybe you don’t need to use a sealer?

In New Zealand, many farmers are using sealers in their in-calf heifers as they bag up in milk for the first time. However, many of these heifers are outwintered and the challenge of environmental type bacteria getting into udders as they bag up in milk is higher.

The danger with this procedure is that you have to be very careful when actually inserting the sealer.

If you insert dirt up into the canal in front of the sealer you can actually cause mastitis.

However, on the other side, if you have a big problem with first calving heifers that are calving down with mastitis, then that is a huge cost to your business and you need to sort it out.

Get to the root of the problem, identify what is the cause and try to fix the problem. Remember, sealers are only a barrier.

All these options are real if you have measurement and know exactly how many cases of mastitis you had in milking cows, how many cases you had in first calving heifers and milk recording data.

For me, milk recording should just be compulsory for all dairy herds. And the milk samples should be used for a lot more than SCC, fat and protein. Other diseases should be monitored.