At St. Boniface Vets, many of our dairy herds are Autumn block calving and will shortly be considering their selective dry cow management. Therefore, we thought we’d share a few reminders as to why a selective approach is the best approach:

• There is no sense in giving antibiotic dry cow therapy to an uninfected cow
• In fact, if you do give antibiotics to low somatic cell count cows, their risk of coliform mastitis in the next lactation actually increases
• Of 52 UK farms studied, those that were using selective dry cow management were significantly less likely to have cows developing mastitis in the first 30 days of lactation.
• Protection against new infection in the dry period is much better achieved by using teat sealants and will reduce the risk by around 25%

To discuss dry cow management with a member of the farm team, please call the practice - 01363 772860 (and select option 2).