Milk producer’s love of farming restored after conquering mastitis challenges

A dairy farmer who was forced to discard an average of 250L of milk per cow in his fight against mastitis says he is enjoying farming again after restoring udder health.

Fourth generation farmer Joe Devine was experiencing high levels of mastitis in his pedigree Ballygeeher Holstein herd, a situation which spiralled out of control in the summer of 2018.

“Mastitis had been an ongoing problem; I went down the antibiotic route but that was costing an absolute fortune and it was only masking the problem,” said Joe, who runs the 50-cow herd at Bornacoola in the south of Co. Leitrim.

“After two or three weeks it would flare up again; antibiotics seemed to kill the infection but not the disease as such.”

Environmental

Joe calves 75% of his herd in the spring and the remainder in the autumn, supplying milk to Auviro on a liquid contract. Cows yield an average of 8,000L from twice-a-day (TAD) milking, at 4.1% butterfat and 3.37% protein.

The herd grazes from March to October before being housed on a diet of silage and up to 12kg of concentrates in the parlour.

Joe milk records monthly and a passing comment by the technician made him question the incidence of mastitis in his herd.

“He asked me why I always had cows in the herd being treated with antibiotics, that it was unusual to have that level of consistency. That is when the penny dropped,” Joe admited.

The issue seemed to be environmental – problems would start at turnout in March, when the cows were still being housed at night.

“Once it got in it spread from cow to cow in the parlour because I don’t have cluster flush,” said Joe.

When cell counts peaked at 700,000 cells/ml, he embarked on a programme of culling but mastitis continued to be a major problem.

A turning point came when he bolused infected cows with Maycillin, an udder health system which releases allicin, an active substance in garlic. Allicin is used in bolus form in several countries as an alternative to antibiotics in both clinical and sub clinical challenges.

“We used the bolus initially as a fire fighting tool; when cows showed clinical signs of mastitis I gave them the bolus,” Joe explained.

It fully restored udder health in two-thirds of the bolused cows. Cows with high cell counts are now given the bolus at drying off and again at calving.

“I can’t give all the credit to Maycillin for getting the cell counts down to 100,000–120,000 because we culled very heavily, but we now get very few cases of mastitis and all the milk can be sold,” said Joe.

Exceptional improvements

He reports exceptional improvements in some of the cows.

“There was one cow that I had been regretting getting back in calf because her cell counts were in the millions but I gave her the bolus at drying off and again at calving and now her cell count is below 200,000 and she is still clear of mastitis.”

Mastitis was a costly disease for Joe’s business – not only was there the financial outlay for antibiotics and vet fees, but there was a significant loss of income from milk that could not be sold because of the withdrawal period for antibiotics.

“We were treating some cows right into peak yields and we were loosing at least a week’s worth of milk at the time,” said Joe.

Maycillin, he says, has made farming more enjoyable. “Farming is a solitary profession and when things are not going right it makes it far more difficult; there were times when I wouldn’t feel like going up around the yard.

“I believe Maycillin boluses are the way forward. There is ever-increasing pressure on farmers to reduce antibiotic usage on animals and in future it may be that we won’t be able to use antibiotic dry cow therapy on dairy cows.”