Michael and Alex McCarthy from Feenagh, Co. Limerick, have been using Boviseal for the past six years and know how effective it is at preventing mastitis during the dry period.
In the modern Irish dairy-herd, the practice of employing blanket antibiotic dry cow therapy has lost its justification.
Instead, a shift is taking place, highlighting the merits of adopting blanket use of Boviseal – an internal teat sealant, as a sustainable and responsible alternative during the drying-off process.
Importance of dry period
All bacterial infections that cause mastitis enter the udder through the teat ends with two out of three cases of mastitis picked up during the dry period.
Although the infections are acquired during the dry period, they may not manifest themselves as a clinical case or subclinical case of mastitis until lactation begins or even months later.
Father and son duo, Michael and Alex McCarthy were winners of the National Dairy Council and Kerrygold Quality Milk Award (QMA) in 2021.
They understand the importance of the dry period and the importance of using a highly effective and reliable teat sealant to prevent both clinical and subclinical mastitis.
In most of their cows, they put total trust in Boviseal and use it on its own. This is selective dry cow therapy (SDCT), a goal all farmers should strive to achieve.
For many farmers, however, SDCT is still an aspiration they are working towards and for a few years they will need to use an antibiotic tube alongside Boviseal to reduce the level of infection in the herd.
Preventing mastitis
Michael McCarthy commented: “Boviseal is helping to maintain our cell count at a very low level. We like to keep it at around 100,000 give or take 20,000 so it ranges from 80,000 to 120,000 throughout the year, which we are comfortable with.”
During the dry period, a natural keratin plug should form in the teat canal which acts as a physical defence mechanism to protect against bacteria entering the udder via the teat ends.
However, this natural protective mechanism is not always effective. Roughly, one in four dairy cows may fail to develop a complete plug in the dry period.
Without this barrier, there is a greater risk of bacteria entering the udder.
Boviseal replaces the natural keratin plug and has been proven to consistently prevent more than one in three cases of mastitis during the next lactation.
Michael explained: “Our confidence has grown over the years, and we are in our fifth year of selective dry cow.
“We started off at a very low level, about 10% of the cows, but we worked ourselves up to about 80% of the cows with Boviseal only and no antibiotic tubes.
“If Boviseal wasn’t doing the job, I’m sure we would have had consequences before now. Mastitis incidence for the year is around 3% to 4%. That’s the proof.”
Boviseal Dry Cow Intramammary Infusion contains 2.6 g Bismuth subnitrate per syringe.
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