Mastitis Management

Author tried well to explain about mastitis, it continues to be the most frequent and costly disease of dairy cattle. Financial losses due to mastitis occur for both subclinical and clinical stages of the disease. Prevention is the most cost-effective way to control mastitis, but Milk from cows with sub-clinical mastitis accidentally mixed into bulk milk enters food chain and poses a threat to human health. Milk and other dairy products are reported to be frequently infected with Staphylococcus aureus. Management of mastitis can be done by good hygiene, proper nutrition, antioxidants and improving immune system of animal. Good management is the important to prevent mastitis in farm. It should include cleanliness in the farm, dry floor as far as possible, teat dip before and after milking, drying the teats before milking, cleaning of milking machine and its parts with proper detergents, milkman’s health and hygiene, aflatoxins, less protien and energy, poor quality minerals, faulty milking.

Bio security is the major criteria in management of mastitis.Also the somatic cell count ,as soon as the count is higher than the permissible limit,the treatment must be started.

The only remedy is if vaccine is developed against mastitis. Otherwise mastitis leads to economic losses with  no recovery.

DR.MUHAMMAD SHAFIQUE
DAIRY CONSULTANT

Dr Jasmer singh, Rtd.Prof. PAU, Ludhiana, Punjab.

The most important aspect to prevent/treat a disease is to know its most probable cause and then devise control measures.Our team has worked on mastitis for quite some time and published our findings in scientific journals of repute. In the above comments some people had talked about the use of tri-Sodium citrate as a treatment for mastitis in bovines. we have reported for the first time the cause and succesful treatment of mastitis. The cause is deficiency of citrate in the udder and its replenishment by oral or I/V administration of tri-Sodium citrate is the radical treatment of mastitis.

To explain the case precisely please see our research papers on the internet under " Tri-Sodium citrate as treatment of mastitis in bovines, By- K. S. Dhillon and Jasmer Singh and others.

1. Dhillon KS , Singh J and Gill BS. 1989. A new horizon into the treatment mastitis in..., J Res.m Punjab Agri. Univ.,26: 477
2. Dhillon KS and Singh J. 2009. Veterinary Record, Augst 8 2009, 165: 183.
3. ................, and ............ 2011. Proceedings 30th World Vety. Assoc., Conf. held at Capetown, Oct 10-14, pp 42.

Re. Recent trends in mastitis management By Dr Sharma covers most commonly presumed causes with good management practices for the control of mastitis in bovines. Here we give the basic cause and radical treatment of this most economical and dreaded ailment of dairy industry perpetually inflicting all over the globe.

Kundan Singh Dhillon and Jasmer Singh (Both retd. Professors from Pb. Agril. Univ., Ludhiana, India).

Citrate has been regarded as the harbinger of lactogenesis and its quantity increases spectaculrly arround parturition (2-3 days) and its concentration in milk is directly proportionate to the volume of milk throughout lactation. The other cardinal function citrate in udder is to sequester Ca2+ and maintain the eqilibrium of Ca++ and H+ to regulate the pH of milk in udder (~6.50). Whenever there is disturbed homeostasis of citrate in udder the moderator effect on Ca sequesteration is upset and the Free Ca++ form clumps and behave like Lime which injures the secretory epithelium resulting in iflammation. The tight junctions present between blood and milk become compromised and leaky culminating in the swapping of ions between milk and blood. The main ions are Na, K, Cl, Hco3, Citrate which freely transfer/exchange making the milk pH equivalent to blood (7.20 or even more) i.e., alkaline. The injury caused by Ca++ and the alkaline milieu in udder provides the most conducible conditions for the invasion by the environmental pathogens and initiate an explosive iinflammatory reaction. Inflammation atracts body defense cells like macrophases, PML and cytokines etc., resulting in varying degrees of pathological entities and clinical signs of infectious Mastitis. Hence, the basic cause of mastitis is the dyshomeostasis of Citrate with subsequent infection by the enviromental pathogens (commensals?) i.e., the infectious causes of mastitis are secondary. Moreover, a significant number(~30%) of mastitis are usually sterile and studies to deliberately infect the udder with extraneous infections have failed to cause mastitis in 100% of cases. We treated clinical cases of mastitis with oral administeration of 30gm of tri-Sodium citrate in 250ml of water which took 3-5 days for full recovery. We also standardised the I/V dose of tri-Sodium citrate as 5% most applicable in the field cases of different grades of mastitis. This treatment was also particularly very effective in cases refrectory to antibiotics and the cure rate was reduced to 1-3 days. The treatment is safe, economical, no milk withrawal or waste of milk no culling or replacements etc., and no hazzards to consumers.

is there is any role of biotin in mastitis.
if yes then how much should be oral or injectable dose.kindly suggest

Nice article about Trends in Mastitis Management.. but few questions related to views put by author:

*Suggesting that teat dips to be used for 15 days only- is any long acting teat dip is available if not then how it will protect from getting infections in rest 15 days?

*Author has suggested Iodine based teat dips- Let me remind that there are lots of drawback in long term usage of Iodine based products. Also there are human health issues related to it. Just for economical reason, these issues can not be compromised.

Thank you very much for this information which is very interesting and new approach in order to treat mastitis. Should you please tell me if you have some opinion to use three sodium citrate for treating sub clinical mastitis? Another point , if it is possible to use sodium citrate by infusing in the udder of cow?

Hello Mr Cedden,
Mastitis whether sub-clinical or clinical, the cause is invariably same and thus treatment same. The cause of mastitis is citrate deficiency and treatment is to replenish this deficiency by extraneous administeration of tri-Sodium citrate orally or I/V. The oral dose is 30gm in ~250ml of water as a drench once daily till recovery ( which is usually3-5 ays). The I/V dose is 5% solution in sterlized normal saline as 50ml morning and evening. This treatment is effective even in mastitis cases refrectory to antibiotic therapy. The other query regarding infusion in udder with citrate we have not tried.

Dr Jasmer Singh

Mastitis is till burning issue and need to curb.Measures are still awaiting for this issue.

DR.MUHAMMAD SHAFIQUE
DAIRY CONSULTANT,PAKISTAN.

Bovine mastitis is an inflammation of the mammary gland that is usually a result of microbial infection. The mastitis produce big economic problems, so, the mastitis is the problem most researched.

At present, the use of antibiotics presents certain inconveniences due to the high cost in addition to the generation of bacterial resistance, for this reason, new mastitis control methods continue to be studied, for example there are many research about use of lactic acid bacteria for mastitis control and the researches they mention that it is possible that lactic acid bacteria can be a control for mastitis but despite that there are a lot of researches in bovine mastitis even in 2012 the most important problem in dairy farm continues.

So We as professionals, We have to do something, I think We have to innovate, I do'nt know but I think we have to do something that allow us control of bovine mastitis.

Friendly,

C. Elena E.V.
Zoot. Msc.

Hello Elena

You are requested to read the article " Pathobilogy, etiology and novel treatment of mastitis in buffaloe' by Dr KS Dhillon and Dr Jasmer singh which appeared in ' Engormix.com" sometime ago.

Jasmer

One can not think of dairy industry without mastitis. Efforts extending over more than a century have miserably failed to treat, control and manage this problem. I think it's high time we look for alternative therapy. My experience with homeopathy has been promising vis-a-vis conventional therapy. It is cost effective with no resistance problem in man and beast.

Hello Dr Sethi and Dr Elena, We have researched extensively the basic cause and radical therapy of clinical/sub-clinical mastitis in bovines. The results of our investigations are published in various journals of repute e.g., Vety Rec , Indian J Dairy Sci, Proc. World Vety Conf. etc., and have been reviewed in various review papers. The basic cause of mastitis is found to be Citrate deficiency and the treatment consists of administration of 30gms of tri-Sodium citrate disssolved in ~250 ml of drinking water given once daily till recovery, which usually takes 3-5 days. However, tri-Sodium citrate can also be administerd I/V as 5% solution in sterilized normal saline in 5oml doses in the morning and evening followed by 30gm doses orally, if necessary, till recovery which is usually 1-3 days. Moreover, this treatment is also very effective against mastitis resistant to routinely used antibiotics etc. The treatment is safe, economical, free from hazards, no discarding of milk as the chemical is normal content in the in TCA cycle. This treatment has been routinely used against mastitis in cows in NewZeland, Trinidad Tobago, Pakistan, India, to cite a few, and many more countries.

with regards KS Dhillon and Dr Jasmer singh

Hello Dr. Singh. You mean role of bacteria is secondary, if this be so why not use tri- sodium citrate as feed additive and curb the menace before it happens ?
Regardfully
P.K.S.

Hello Dr Sethi, You are right in considering the feeding of citrate as a preventative for mastitis in dairy animals. In fact we have tried this at certain farms with great success. The important point in this procedure is to monitor the pH and citrate content of milk during lactation. The monitoring of milk pH with graded papers strips, indeed, is the most easy, economical and desirably reliable which could be routinly practiced at any dairy farm.

with regards Jasmer

Hello Dr. Jasmer Singh kindly inform citrate addition per ton of feed and availability of graded paper strips in India.
Yours
P.K.S.

Hello Dr Sethi, For preventing mastitis in dairy animals give 30gm doses of tri-Sodium citrate quite often as before parturition and during lactation by monitoring pH and citrate content of milk. Mixing of this salt in feed deteriorates because of its hygroscopic nature. Th graded pH papers can be obtained from any shop dealing with chemicals for laboratory use as Glaxo-Smith-kline etc.

With regards Jasmer

Thanks Dr. Jasmer, I will communicate my experience with T.S.Citrate in the near future.
Yours
P.K.Sethi