Antibiotics

With cows having had a late start to grazing this spring, many herds had to deal with slightly more mastitis cases than usual. When treating cows, its key to ensure you don’t accidently let milk contaminated with antibiotics into the bulk tank.

• Mark the cows before treating them to ensure you don’t miss them.
• Accurately record which cows were treated and when their withdrawal periods are up.
• Test cows before putting their milk back into the bulk tank.

Consumers are guaranteed that their milk is antibiotic-fee. Therefore, all loads must be tested going into each site and supplier individual samples are also tested to ensure compliance. A positive finding will see the load rejected, and costs passed back to the supplier whose milk is identified as being the root cause.

All farms are recommend to ensure that they have sufficient insurance to cover this event as costs incurred will include milk disposal and transport costs associated with that disposal. Drivers are also delayed when dealing with a positive load. This will inconvenience other suppliers being collected by this driver. Treating cows with antibiotics judiciously is a herd management tool to assist cows get over infections and recover quickly. All herds should be working with their vets to ensure they are using the most suitable antibiotics. For mastitis treatments, it is recommended that you get some culturing and sensitivity testing done to establish what bacteria are causing issues, and which antibiotics will be the most effective. Dry cow therapy has changed and all herds are now encouraged to make a strategy to move from blanket antibiotic use. To do this, you need milk recording results and need to assess which cows can be dried off with sealer only. You need individual cow data to work on this so milk recording is essential.

Make 2024 the year to start – contact your Milk Supply Manager or Fionnuala Malone SCC programme manager 086 813 0726 to start milk recording.

CHARM strips can be purchased online here on Tirlán FarmLife

First Published 29 March 2024