Can Cow-side Mastitis Management Improve Profitability?
One of the greatest threats to a dairy’s profitability is something we can’t even see – until hundreds of dollars in time, production and treatments are already gone. At the World Dairy Expo Knowledge Nook session, “Cow-side Mastitis Management,” Julia Somerdin, CEO and Cofounder of Labby Inc., detailed the profit-saving potential of catching mastitis early.
“Twenty-five percent of cows get mastitis every year, regardless of how well they’re managed,” Somerdin said. “Subclinical mastitis, it’s just like COVID – no symptoms. And when the farmer can’t see it, they don’t know they need to treat it, and they’re already losing profit.”
According to Somerdin, traditional mastitis testing doesn’t allow a producer to catch mastitis soon enough. In many cases, the visual signs a producer typically looks for appear after somatic cell count has gone up and begun to impact premiums. By the time a CMT is completed or a monthly DHI report comes back, both production and quality have already dropped significantly, and you have no way to monitor changes in SCC between the times of the DHI tests.
Somerdin and Labby have proposed their inline and standalone testers for milk analysis as a profit-saving solution that can detect mastitis by measuring SCC on the farm, both frequently and in a timely manner. With the handheld device, a producer can test a single raw milk sample for fat, protein and SCC. Inline sensing provides automated testing for the same components across the whole herd. Lab-quality results are available to the producer within seconds and viewable on an accompanying herd management app.
With the availability of both handheld and inline testing, both large and small herds can benefit from early detection, and you’re able to closely monitor high-risk groups and individuals, such as transition cows. Marty and Corinne Paulhamus of Williamsport, PA, explained the implications this type of technology can have for their 52-cow herd.
“For our small farm it makes a huge difference in catching it early, and it’s the waiting to see the symptoms where we know it’s really impacting us,” Corinne said. Marty confirmed, “If we have a cow making 100 lbs, a case of mastitis is going to cost us $400.”
In addition to early detection, access to individual cow data is key to maintaining milk quality, administering timely and precise treatments, and preventing mastitis from spreading throughout the herd. “That’s what we need,” Corinne said. “Since we do the milking and everything ourselves, we need something efficient but gives us a lot of information.”
Somerdin also stated, “You want to make sure that cow with SCC of 1 million does not go into the bulk tank. Imagine how that can really hurt your average in a herd of less than 70.” A large herd sees the impact in a different way – while the quality in a larger quantity of milk wouldn’t change as much, you’ll see more cows affected, just by the contagious nature of the disease.
Somerdin said while this kind of technology and precision comes with a moderate cost, it offers a quick ROI by offsetting labor costs, improving eligibility for premium payments, automating testing, and providing a new generation of data and analytics that predicts and prevents failures.
