The way of curing the udder from mastitis depends on the type of the bacteria. There are two different types of mastitis. One of them is contagious. They are in the udder and in the cow itself. The other one is in the environment. The worst of them are staphylococcus and streptococcus. They can be spread in the whole flock by the milking claws and by the udder towels. Cows that are infected by streptococcus have to be separated from the other ones because the infection-rate is very high.

The antibiotic-therapy is the most common way of curing the udder from mastitis. (80%)  S.Aureus is very hard to treat because they can be also in the tissue of the udder and the curing success would by about 20 to 40% if you will use antibiotics.

If you are using antibiotics you should always know what kind of bacteria you are dealing with. Many bacteria are resistant to some antibiotics and if you are using wrong kind of antibiotics you create more of them. Best way to do it is test the milk before therapy and finds best medicine for that mastitis.

Other way to cure mastitis are use peppermint crème and milk infected quarter more often. In Finland they usually put chronicle quarter try because cow is milking only 10 % less that from four quarters.  

Dry cows are one of the biggest problems, because the agent isn’t milked out. Only cows with a fit udder should be allowed to come into the dry period.  Cows that are very often infected by mastitis are not really valuable for your livestock and also not very cost efficient. Sometimes the best solution is to sell the cow to the butcher.

Back to "Udder healthness"