Discover the key differences between mastitis and teat sealant residue at freshening. Learn to accurately identify and manage these conditions in dairy cows.
Discover the key differences between mastitis and teat sealant residue at freshening. Learn to accurately identify and manage these conditions in dairy cows.Distinguishing mastitis from teat sealant residue is crucial. This skill is vital for minimizing unnecessary interventions and ensuring that we’re using antibiotics judiciously on farms. With the leaps we’ve made in reproduction and genomics, cows of today are being dried off at unparalleled levels. Cows that produce milk at higher levels are consequently less likely to form a natural keratin plug. This leaves their teat ends open throughout the dry period, boosting the chances for environmental bacteria to introduce themselves into the quarter and incite mastitis.
“After dry-off, teats may leak some and there may be physical pressure there that holds the teat end open and doesn’t allow the keratin plug to completely form,” Linda Tikofsky, Senior Associate Director at Boehringer Ingelheim explains. “There were a couple of studies in the early 2000s. They examined the percentage of teats that didn’t close after dry-off. They looked at cows under 40 pounds per milking, and cows milking over that benchmark. In the group that was pulling higher weights, about 50% of those cows’ teat ends stayed open well into the dry period.”
In cows that can’t form a keratin plug naturally, teat sealants step in to copy what the natural keratin plug should do. A teat sealant acts as a nonreactive barrier to bacterial migrations, standing as the primary defense line against bacterial incursions of the quarter.
“We commonly use it with a dry cow antibiotic which is aimed at eliminating any subclinical mastitis those cows may have at dry-off,” Tikofsky continues. “Even a cow that will eventually form a keratin plug might take up to two weeks before it’s fully formed. This way we’re giving them immediate protection at dry-off to stave off bacterial invasions, and then the teat sealant will linger in the quarter until it’s stripped out at the end of the dry period or once the cow freshens.”
The first line of mastitis detection in the parlor is placed on the shoulders of milking personnel. When looking for mastitis, they focus on identifying if a cow has a quarter that is red, inflamed, or sensitive. As the cows freshen, their next task becomes colostrum collection.
However, during the milking process, there can be cases where healthy cows are accidentally signaled for mastitis. This often happens due to confusing the teat sealant residue with mastitis signs. Colored sealing agents are easy to spot against milk, but white ones can easily be mistaken for mastitic milk.
Tikofsky makes it clear:
“We may be treating some cows unnecessarily with antibiotics if we are confusing teat sealant with mastitis as some farms prefer to treat every case of mastitis. We’d like to minimize our antibiotic use. Every time we treat cows and instill antibiotics into those quarters, it incurs a milk withdrawal. This can end up costing the farm money in both the medication costs and the milk discard and the pounds of milk lost.”
To save time and labor, only cows identified as mastitic should be sent for further evaluation. Getting this right is crucial, and misidentifications can have significant implications, such as unnecessary treatments and impacts on milk yield. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure your team is correctly and regularly trained to accurately differentiate mastitis from teat sealant residue.
