Drying-off and dry cow therapy of dairy cows

 Mastitis (udder inflammation) is a disease that much too often affects newly calved dairy cows. Several of these cases are caused by bacterial infections that infected the udder in association with drying-off or during the dry period. The risk for such infections are affected by the routines at drying-off and during the dry period. In connection with drying-off it may be suitable to treat some cows with long-acting intramammary antibiotics. The selection of cows and hur the treatment is performed can affect the results of such treatment.

The main aim of the project was to collect information on the use of, advice on and attitudes to drying-off, dry cow therapy and dry period among dairy producers, veterinarians and other advisors. We also wanted to study if routines and advice vary within target group for example due to herd size and veterinary experience.

During the autumn of 2019 web-based questionnaires were sent to 2 472 dairy producers affiliated to Växa Sverige, Skånesemin or Råfgivarna i Sjuhärad, 487 veterinarians that treated at least one case of mastitis in cattle during 2018 or wer employed by Växa Sverige, Skånesemin or Rådgivarna i Sjuhärad as well as to 77 production advisors employed by those organisations. The questionnaires were divided in several parts with questions on background information on the dairy producer/herd, veterinarian or advisor as well as questions on drying-off, dry cow therapy with antibiotics, treatment with internal teat sealants, dry period, housing for dairy cows (only to dairy producers) and interest in more information and advice. The answers were summarized descriptively. When possible univariable analyses of associations beween answers and background factors for farmers and veterinarians were also performed. The number of participating production advisors was too small for such analyses.

For each target group the answers to the questions were presented followed by the findings of the statistical analyses when such had been performed. In a special section comparisons between target groups for some of the questions were done. Then the answers relative Swedish recommendations, differences between target groups and why some background factors affected the responses were discussed. Moreover, recommendations from some other countries and results from scientific studies were presented to evaluate the quality of the Swedish recommendations. We also included a section on routines etc i herds with automatic milking in the discussion. Finally, needs for information and activities were discussed.

The routines or advice used by the dairy producers, veterinarians and production advicors that answered the questionnaires were in many cases good and similar but the answered also showed that there is room for improvement within several areas. We also found that existing recommendations were no always sufficient and that they were in need of updating and clarifications. New recommendations were therfore produced and presented. Information on these and the results from the final report are spread to target groups via suitable channels.