It’s always exciting to watch a group of replacement heifers develop and anticipate their performance in the milking string as the top genetics of your herd. There is just about nothing more devastating than freshening them in to find mastitis or even worse, a blind quarter. When a first calf heifer calves in with a high somatic cell count she is more likely to maintain the high count, and more likely to be culled.

Heifer mastitis, or intramammary infection (IMI), is a common affliction yet we know very little about what stage of production it occurs and how to best diagnosis the root of the problem. Pamela Adkins, DVM at the University of Missouri worked with a team to capture culture samples from a variety of stages of heifer development to fabricate standard protocols for sample collection and help producers better understand how to circumvent this disease cycle for their herd.

Listen in to learn how to improve heifer development and limit the tragedy of damaged replacements.

Topics of discussion

1:51 Introduction of Dr. Pamela Adkins 2:26 Why is this topic important 4:17 Establishing standard sampling procedures 5:11 Cisternal puncturing 7:43 Comparison of sample collection 8:37 Grouping to determine when IMI begins in heifers 10:27 Causes and severity of infections 11:53 Feeding raw milk to hutch heifers 12:51 Normal microflora vs mastitis causing 15:36 If you have a heifer mastitis problem, what’s the next steps 17:21 What’s the best way to collect a sample? 18:44 Where to send aseptic samples 19:54 To freeze or not to freeze 21:48 Why were gestating heifers 8x as likely to have IMI? 23:05 What do you want “boots on the ground” dairymen to learn from this project?

Featured Article:

Evaluation of intramammary infection status in dairy heifers using cisternal and teat end sampling techniques

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