Effect of enhanced hygiene on transmission of Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus agalactiae, and Streptococcus dysgalactiae in dairy herds with automatic milking systems

Got Milk? How AI, Lab Techniques and Automation Could Help You Get More

“…Streptococcus agalactiae was reduced to 19% of the transmission in the control group and transmission of Streptococcus dysgalactiae was reduced to 17% [8]. These data suggest that with regular disinfecting of the system using an automatic spray and daily changing of brushes, the transmission of bacteria and therefore prevalence of bacterial infections were reduced, improving the overall health of the herd.…”

“…Automated milking systems can have health benefits for the herd via increased hygiene, leading to a reduction in transmission of bacteria [8]. In a study by Skarbye et al, they took 701 milk samples and analyzed them using quantitative PCR.…”

The Costs of Chronic Mastitis: A Simulation Study of an Automatic Milking System Farm

“…The transmission of pathogens between cows was calculated for the whole herd at the end of each model iteration. The number of infection days during the model iteration of each pathogen was multiplied by a pathogen-specific transmission parameter (β i expected number of transmission cases per infected day) based on Dalen et al (2019a) and Skarbye et al (2021). However, transmission cases could possibly transmit further if β i * Duration i (transmission parameter tines the median duration of episode of pathogen i) < 1 and we assume that the median duration and transmission parameter remains constant, transmissions would be a converging infinite geometric series (De Serres et al, 2000).…”

“…It is somewhat likely that transmission modes on AMS farms are different from the transmission rates on conventional farms due to automated cleaning and disinfection procedures in milking robots. Currently, only Dalen et al (2019a), Skarbye et al (2021), andDeng et al (2021) have recently reported transmission rates with current robots. It was only studied on either 1 or 2 farms for 4-17 months and for a limited number of pathogens.…”

“…Other studies that measure transmission on AMS systems were unknown to the authors. We used the results of Dalen et al (2019a) and Skarbye et al (2021) as they covered the most pathogens. The differences in these studies indicate that the transmission rates vary substantially between farms and have a large confidence interval.…”