Not complaining. Just wanted to pass along a learning experience that I had this past week. I have twin holsteins. They are 3 yrs old. One calved in June and developed a case of mastitis in her right back quarter. After a couple of vet visits and several rounds of anitbiotics, it cleared up. Her sister calved on the 2nd of this month. Here I was all excited that I was soon going to have some more fresh milk. So, I put her in the stall and put the milker on her. Unlike her twin, there was no kicking or any of that. She was so easy to handle. I noticed at the first milking that her milk looked a bit discolored. I didn't think much of it,just thought it was due to the colostrum in it. Then, after a couple of days, she stopped giving the usual amount. I thought "ok, she's holding it up for the calf". WRONG. A week ago tonight, I put the calf in the barn for the night. Next morning, I couldn't get Annie to come to the barn. She could barely walk. I emailed a friend who runs a dairy and she said MILK FEVER. I immediately called the vet. Fortunatley for me, she was in her office. (that was last Sunday). She came about an hour later. We got Annie into the barn and in her stall. Gave her drip and the vet says she has mastitis in 3 of her quarters. Looks like I'm going to lose that milk with this lactation :( . I've had to give her oxybiotic shots every other day since Sunday. At first, she didn't like it a bit, but the last two times she's done fine. her udder is looking much better and the amount of milk she's giving has increased to almost where it was b4. Hopefully she'll do ok and not lose those quarters. Least now I know what to look for with milk fever. Just wanted to share my adventure this week. HOpe all have a great week ahead. Tim

-- Tim (elemteach4@yahoo.com), April 13, 2002

Answers

Were your cows from a dairy? I tell anyone who will listen to never ever ever buy a milk cow that has had mastitis in the past. Mastitis is kind of like the monster that lives in the closet....ya never know when it is gonna jump out at ya. You can clear up an occurence of mastitis but I don't think you can ever really 'cure' it. When I worked on one dairy the owner was too cheap to give his cows medical care(shoulda been a warning light go off in my head right then). His mastitis count was so high that he was one week from the milk company refusing to pick up from him. Over half his herd had mastitis from poor milking practices(and he had a really muddy lot). We started putting the cows up in a high pasture so they weren't laying in mud. Then I took lots of extra time massaging and hand stripping infected cows. Took extra time sanitizing equipment too. I brought the mastitis cell count way down. Thorough stripping and teat dipping are very important in a cow that has mastitis. If she is a heavy producer(which yours probably are since she had milk fever...one of the plagues of selectively breeding for absurdly high production) I feel that they will benefit from thrice daily milking. To help guard against milk fever make sure you don't feed a really high protein feed during the last few months of pregnancy.

-- Amanda (mrsgunsmyth@hotmail.com), April 14, 2002.

My girls were 3 days old when I purchased them from a local dairy. I'm wondering if maybe the last one picked up the mastitis from lying on the ground. I fed round bales of hay to them over the winter and they liked to sleep on the "left-over" hay from the bales. I know it wasn't the cleanest place to lie down, since they'd done their business on it :)

I also had them shut out of the field, since there was nothing there for them to eat during the winter. Hopefully, next year it will be better as I plan to have it cleared one more time and plant some bahaia grass for them. I'll overseed that with winter rye during the late fall so they'll have winter grazing next year.

I'm going to talk to my vet about vaccinating them for mastitis. I know there are vaccines for some types of mastitis and I'll feel a little better knowing that they will be protected from them.

Thanks for your reply.

Tim

-- Tim (elemteach4@yahoo.com), April 14, 2002.