Evaluate Your Heat Stress Mitigation We keep doing this better and better, but as cows give more milk and produce more heat, we need to. The goal is to abolish summer. A goal to have no drop in milk production, reproduction, or increases in standing leading to lameness. Do we meet all of our goals, no but we can get closer than we ever have. Sprinklers for all adult cows; milking and dry are a start. The holding pen is first priority and we want big droplets that penetrate the hair coat down to the skin. Once the skin is wet, we blow droplets off the surface taking heat with them. Continuous soaking and fine mist don’t work because water traps heat in the hair. This is not much of a problem in holding pens because cows move through it and we have enough fans to blow water off rapidly. That is not the case at the feed line.

At the feed line, we want at least a few minutes gap for the fans to blow the water off. We have seen a difference in cow behavior when the sprinklers are in the 60 to 66 inch height putting water directly on the cows backs compared to higher mounted sprinklers. A common response is that the cows will tear up the sprinklers if they are lower and that does happen more often when cows are stressed. Cows that are hot will be stressed versus cows that are comfortable will lie down. We have long been concerned with coverage of all cows with a 7 foot spacing of sprinklers. There is a “V” delivery pattern with 120 degree sprinklers. This means cows in the middle may only get one side wet rather than soaking their whole barrel. Experimentation with putting one sprinkler in the middle has gotten cows wet in a hurry and we could cut down the on time, assuming we have enough head pressure. We might do some new installations at a closer spacing than 7 feet. It is worth evaluating your system before April.

Many Klebsiella Cases Klebsiella is a gram negative environmental bacteria that we occasionally see in mastitis cases. Sometimes, it gets to high enough levels in a farm environment that it causes significant death in lactating cows. It is like E. coli on steroids. Cows can be normal at one milking and dead the next. Some farms have decided not to treat hot mastitis cases, but ship them immediately. That may be the right decision, but it is not sustainable. There is another option. Kleb Vac has been available for several years and is very effective at stopping death loss. We don’t need to add another vaccine if it is not necessary, but can determine that need with culture. If you see cows with watery mastitis that deteriorate quickly with death, bring us a milk sample. We can commonly grow Klebsiella over night and can have vaccine in a day or two. Our experience has been that we often change bedding sources or make some other management changes and no longer need to vaccinate with Kleb Vac after a year or two.

How was your Fly Control? Fly season isn’t over yet, but we have done very well this year. We had only minimal bunching and that was on the hottest and most humid days. I see several A1 sprayers aimed down to get the legs and bellies and many have a regular spray schedule. Are we getting flies controlled on young stock as well as we could? We have had barns where calves bunch creating air quality and respiratory issues.

Now is a good time to evaluate how we did to change what we do for next year. Kenley Rogers, from Central Life Sciences (Clarifly), did peer group meetings for us last winter. She is willing to evaluate your fly control at no charge. Her number is 330-465-9225. You can also let our doctors know that you would like her to take a look.

Contagious Mastitis Control Dr Lefeld. Some of our herds have very little challenge in this arena, while others may have more. There are aspects of this concept, however, that everyone should be aware of to help minimize the risk of a trainwreck. The classic examples of contagious mastitis include: Staph Aureus, Mycoplasma, and Strep Ag.

There are steps that we can all take to minimize the risk of an issue (whether you have known contagious pathogens or not). These steps are relatively simple and can reduce the spread of these pathogens to our highest risk animals. Contagious pathogens are spread in the parlor, most frequently by milk in the liner, but also on milkers’ gloves between cows (including in the hospital). With this in mind, we should be milking our fresh cows, and youngest animals first. In theory, these should be the “cleanest” animals on the farm, and should reduce the risk of spread of pathogens to other animals. Other principals include using a good post dip (I generally recommend iodines, or chlorine dioxide), with adequate coverage of the entire barrel of the teat including the teat end. This post dip will reduce the risk of spreading pathogens in the parlor by killing micro-organisms on the teat that they may have come in contact with in the liner.

Teat health can be an important defense against contagious organisms. Rough teat ends and skin surfaces can harbor pathogens that can then grow into the teat end or be injected into the teats during a “squawk” event on the milking system. Are you evaluating and scoring long term and short term teat condition? Cleanliness scoring can be done at the same time and while it usually relates more to environmental pathogens, all improvements in cleanliness help milk quality. Summer is ending and winter will come soon. Emolients are important year round but especially in the winter. Make sure you plan to switch dips, if you do for winter, to get that done at the right time.

For herds with known contagious pathogens, we should have a plan in place to identify and either cull or separate these animals to reduce the risk of spread. This especially applies when managing our hospital or mastitis cows. The hospital pen can be high risk because of the potential of spreading infections easily to new cows. For example, a cow could go into the hospital because she has metritis and within a few days, she has mastitis. Handling these cows with care is important.

There aren’t any tests (that I’m aware of) that allow immediate results to identify a pathogen by the time she would come in the parlor to be treated, so we need to treat each HOSPITAL cow as if she COULD be contagious. This includes only pre-stripping cows when a manager (or trusted herdsperson) is in the parlor to monitor therapy and make treatment decisions. Hospital personnel nee do disinfect gloves between cows, or (better yet) change gloves between cows. In situations like this, the risk of spread is in the milk itself, so we need to make sure our personnel managing these cows are aware of the risk. We don’t want to send a cow to the hospital to pick up a disease that was worse than the one we sent her there for.

Life is an echo.

What you send out, comes back.

What you sow, you reap.

What you give, you get.

What you see in others, exists in you.

Remember, life is an echo.

It always gets back to you.

So give goodness.

-Zig Ziglar

Maria Stein Animal Clinic

Heartland Animal Clinic, LLC

Heartland Veterinary Care

Maria Stein Animal Clinic

Heartland Animal Clinic, LLC

Heartland Veterinary Care

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