Incidence of clinical mastitis in dairy herds in England

Abstract

The annual incidence of clinical mastitis was measured in 144 Holstein/Friesian dairy herds in England (average size 132 cows) during 1994, 1995 and 1996 by means of carefully defined mastitis indices. The mean annual incidence of the disease over the three-year period was 43.4 quarter-cases per 100 cows, and the disease affected 25.9 per cent of the cows in the herds, with 1.6 quarter-cases per affected cow. In terms of cow-cases, the mean incidence was 39.9 cases per 100 cows in the herd and hence the ratio of quarter-cases to cow-cases was on average 1:1. The proportion of repeat quarter-cases was on average 19.4 per cent, and the recurrence rate was 18.3 per cent. The new infection rate was 28.3 per cent.

An individual modelling tool for consecutive clinical mastitis during the same lactation in dairy cows: a method based on a survival model

“…This of course does not question the physiological independence of each udder quarter. It was noted that the Ren rate obtained with the Orcival farm data (0.23 with a 95% confidence interval of (0.14; 0.35)) appeared consistent with the few data found in the literature (average rate in the United Kingdom: 18.3% for example [29]), considering that in practice, the type of germ incriminated was usually not documented for clinical mastitis.…”

“…For Oltenacu et al [40], "rates of cure for clinical infections at each period and stage are: (a) during the dry period: 72% with strep, 51% with staph, and 65% with other types of organisms, (b) during the lactation period: 65% with strep, 45% with staph, and 60% with other types of organisms". These various approaches correspond to the current statement of veterinary epidemiologists, who are convinced that better knowledge and assessment of clinical mastitis condition in herds requires explicit consideration of the dependence between consecutive cases in assessment and prediction models [2,5,23,29,40].…”

Dairy Cattle Welfare Status Measured by Animal-Linked Parameters Under Tunisian Rearing Conditions

“…Lameness prevalence was 12-87 % with the mean value of 27 ± 17 %. Esslemont & Kossaibati (1996) reported 24 % lameness in a survey of 90 herds in 1992-1993, while in another survey (Kossaibati & Esslemont, 1999), performed on 50 farms during 1995-1996, lameness reached 38%. Herd lameness has been estimated at 22 % by recent studies in the UK (Whay, 2003) and Wisconsin, USA (Cook, 2003) and Clarkson et al (1996).…”

An individual modelling tool for within and between lactation consecutive cases of clinical mastitis in the dairy cow: an approach based on a survival model

“…This approach makes it possible to take into consideration the relative effectiveness of antibiotic treatments applied during lactation following an episode of mastitis [32,42] or during the drying off period, treatments that do not systematically ensure that the udder will recover bacteriologically [23,38]. The new idea introduced to take into account the possible relationship between consecutive lactations is simply based on assessing the health status of the udder at calving: "infected" or "not infected".…”