DEAR SIR: As we move towards the end of October and the autumn feel is in the air, dairy farmers and discussion group chat will turn to the upcoming dry period and a well-earned rest for our hard-working dairy farmers.

As has been discussed over the past couple of years, overuse of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance is becoming a big issue and, to tackle this, blanket use of antibiotic dry cow tubes is to be banned in the near future with just teat sealer used at drying off.

Milk recording

With the benefit of milk recording data to head up cows below a certain level for SCC and in an ideal environment, this may work but with large herds being dried off in mid to late November, it is neither practical or possible to leave large numbers of cows out in their natural environment while restricting feed intake to reduce yield immediately, most dry off.

Research

While there is some work being done on homeopathic and other non-antibiotic treatments, I feel this needs to be ramped up with our world-class research centres such as Moorepark and UCD, etc, hopefully developing and recommending alternative non-antibiotic treatments to offer a level of cover to our valuable cows at this crucial time.

Most farmers now use teat sealer alongside antibiotic dry cow tubes but from my experience as we still see some milk leakage from the udder on to cubicle beds post dry-off, which leads one to conclude that if milk is leaking, harmful bugs can get in with damaging consequences. Maybe some advances could be made here also.

We need action now on an advanced sealer and alternatives to antibiotics.

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