Mastitis is commonly described as an infectious disease, but in real-world dairy systems, it behaves far more like a systems problem. Case rates and economic impact are shaped by the barn environment, milking routines, labor capacity and cow flow long before a pathogen is identified. Mastitis persists not because veterinarians and producers lack knowledge, but because it emerges from the interaction of multiple, interconnected management decisions.
From a practice perspective, mastitis is never truly absent on a dairy.
The Ever-Present Risk of Mastitis
“Mastitis is always something you’re managing. It’s ever-present on a dairy and something you try to manage, control, keep in check and improve upon,” says Dr. Justin Hess, veterinarian at Clinton Veterinary Services in Michigan. “It’s always at the forefront to some degree. You hope to have control measures in place and treatment protocols well developed to make it easy and fairly straightforward for a dairy, but it’s ever-present.”
Even well-managed herds maintain a baseline level of mastitis that fluctuates with the season, staffing changes and parlor consistency. Therefore, the practical objective is control rather than eradication. Success is measured by manageable case rates, quick identification of infection, limited impact on bulk tank somatic cell counts and culling pressure.
“Management choices such as bedding type used in stalls, overcrowding and detection methods for mastitis can all influence the case rate,” Hess says.
This reality contrasts with the tendency to treat mastitis as an isolated event. In practice, spikes in mastitis often follow subtle changes in the environment or management system. Instead of just identifying a pathogen, the vet’s value lies in identifying the systemic failure that allowed the pathogen to thrive.
Integrating Data Into Clinical Insight
Dr. Alon Arazi, chief veterinarian at Afimilk, shares the perspective that mastitis is not just one thing, but one signal inside a much bigger system of animal health, welfare and performance. That’s where technology comes in, specifically animal health monitoring systems where signals from multiple biological inputs are combined to paint a bigger picture of cow health leading to diagnosis. Technology, such as the Afimilk system, allows for the collection of large data sets from both activity and milk monitoring hardware to help with mastitis prevention and detection. Patterns, or deviations from these patterns, can signal when a cow needs a closer look.
“Twenty years ago, a very small percentage of farms used this technology. Now they are using it much more; more farms on a larger scale,” Arazi says. “In the past it was only milk matter and milk production. Now we have much more information. Information about the behavior of the cow and also more information about the milk, such as components … which led us to improving the accuracy of [mastitis] detection.”
These ideas converge on a critical point: There is not one single component of herd health management that dictates mastitis prevalence; it is the sum of the whole. New technologies improve our monitoring capabilities, but they must be applied with strong fundamentals, management and prevention practices.
Solving the Root Cause of Mastitis
“If you cull the top 5% or the top few highest cows as far as somatic cell count, you’ll remove those cows and that’s easy, right? But it doesn’t actually tell you what’s causing those cows to get to that place,” Hess says. “If you’re not changing something upstream, you’re always going to deal with an issue downstream.”
Ultimately, the shift from reactive treatment to proactive system management is what defines a modern, resilient dairy. As Dr. Hess and Dr. Arazi highlight, data and technology are powerful allies, but they function best when they empower the people on the ground to make better “upstream” decisions. By treating mastitis as a symptom of the system rather than a standalone event, dairies can move away from constant firefighting to a more predictable, profitable future.
Having spent their careers at the intersection of veterinary medicine and dairy technology, Dr. Hess and Dr. Arazi share a common passion for evolving how we look at herd health. On the first episode of The Bovine Vet Podcast, they join host Andrea Bedford to discuss why mastitis is much more than a simple infection. Together, they explore the “systems” approach to dairy management and share insights on how veterinarians and producers can use data and environment to stay ahead of the curve.
