23 October 2023

Successfully implementing selective dry cow therapy

Pablo Silva Bolona, mastitis researcher at Teagasc Moorepark, is on this week’s Dairy Edge podcast to discuss his research and recommendations into successfully implementing selective dry cow therapy (SDCT) on farms for the drying off season in 2023.

Pablo first explains the concept of selective dry cow therapy, saying the main risk periods for cows are the two weeks after dry off and the two weeks before calving, as well as early lactation due to the stress of calving reducing immunity to disease.

Individual cow records will be necessary for vets to prescribe correctly, so people should milk record as close to drying off as possible as the research conducted on commercial farms by Pablo and his team have shown that the SCC in the final recording is strongly linked to identifying cows that require antibiotic treatment.

For those that have not milk recorded yet this year, they should look to start recording before the end of lactation and continue to record in 2024. Alternatively, although a far more laborious way, is to take quarter samples from all cows and get these analysed.

Pablo finishes by highlighting that nutritional management of yield is important, with cows dried at <15kg of milk per day having better treatment outcomes under SDCT.

The cleanliness and stocking density of cubicles are also an important factor with twice daily cleaning and liming of cubicles contributing to better outcomes.

A surprisingly high level of infection in first lactation animals resulted in a higher threshold or cut point for first calvers from the predictive model developed from the research. This was 100,000 for the first lactation cows and 65,000 SCC for the second lactation plus cows.

This is not to say that farmers should only apply SDCT to cows at these thresholds, as many farmers are successfully using higher thresholds with great success with some farmers successfully using sealer only treatment on 80-90% of their herds.

Seeking advice and making informed decisions on what cows to treat or not and excellent hygiene at post drying and in the run into calving can see SDCT implemented on Irish farms with little or no impact on the SCC of the herds or nationally.  

Listen to the Dairy Edge Podcast below:

For more episodes from the Diary Edge podcast, a co-production with LastCastMedia.com, go to the show page.