Managing Mastitis

Non-antibiotic product helps manage dairy herd mastitis issues.

- By Courtney Love

No matter the season, mastitis is destructive for dairy farmers. For some dairies, the udder disease can become a year-round challenge.

The disease turns a cow’s udder red, and her mammary glands become swollen, making milking painful. Inside the teat, mastitis damages a cow’s secretory cells, causing white blood and epithelial cells to attack the infection, which can end up in milk.

The disease is expensive. Subclinical mastitis costs the U.S. industry more than $1 billion annually, according to Penn State Extension. In 2015, research from the University of Georgia found that a case of clinical mastitis in the first 30 days of milking costs farmers $444, from diagnostics to dumping milk. On average, a farmer spends $270 per cow to treat mastitis.

In addition to high antibiotic treatment costs and the loss of milk production, farmers are looking to cut back on antibiotic costs. This is especially true as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation requiring farmers to have a veterinary prescription to purchase over-the-counter livestock antibiotic medications has gone into effect.

An Italian product, Ozolea-Mast, could help farmers reduce the occurrence of severe mastitis and the need to dump milk by cows treated with antibiotics, or cull cows due to chronic mastitis. In 2020, the FDA cleared Ozolea-Mast, a non-antibiotic animal product.