The Bovine Vet Podcast

10 Practical Tips for Milk Fever Prevention and Treatment

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:55:19 GMT

Milk fever is still one of the most costly transition cow problems. While down cows get the attention, it’s often the subclinical cases quietly eroding performance that matter most.

To help producers navigate these challenges, we’ve gathered insights from a panel of experts featured on “ The Bovine Vet Podcast ”:

Heather Chandler, a practicing field veterinarian.
Burim Ametaj, an immunometabolism researcher at the University of Alberta.
Megan Connelly, a transition cow specialist with Protekta.

Identify the Invisible

1. Monitor the herd, not just the emergencies

Subclinical hypocalcemia is often invisible, yet it drives secondary diseases and lost milk.

“Blood calcium is an easy thing to look at if we want to be proactive,” Connelly says.

The Action: Pull blood samples from 10 to 12 fresh cows (0-72 hours post-calving) and track the percentage of the group falling below normal calcium thresholds.

2. Watch the cow, not just the spreadsheet

Data is vital, but the eye of a trained herdsman is irreplaceable. Connelly notes many subclinical cases simply show up as cows that “don’t come in and thrive.”

The Action: Train your team to flag cows with reduced intake, lower rumination or generally “off” behavior. Performance dips often precede clinical disease.

Choose and Lock in a Strategy

3. Pick one strategy and execute it flawlessly

Consistency beats complexity every time. Whether you choose a negative DCAD diet or a Zeolite program, the success of the program depends on execution rather than the choice itself.

The Action: If using DCAD, monitor urine pH religiously. If using Zeolite, focus on the feeding rate and dietary phosphorus levels.

4. Respect the 21-day close-up window

A transition diet only works if the cow actually eats it for the required duration. Chandler emphasizes both DCAD and Zeolite programs need to be fed 20 to 25 days before calving.

The Action: Separate close-up cows into their own group 21 days before their due date and ensure they have daily access to the specific transition ration.

Immediate Calving Intervention

5. Time your calcium boluses for maximum impact

Calcium demand spikes the moment the calf hits the ground. Timing is everything.

“You can even give boluses before she calves,” Chandler suggests.

The Action: For high-risk cows, provide one bolus at the onset of labor (or immediately at calving) and a second bolus 12 to 24 hours later.

6. Treat down cows as true emergencies

A cow that cannot stand is a race against time.

“The pure weight of a down cow leads to muscle necrosis quickly,” Chandler warns.

The Action: Respond immediately. While waiting for the vet, roll the cow side-to-side to maintain circulation and ensure she is on deep, supportive bedding. When administering IV calcium, do it slowly and monitor the heart rate.

7. Address the full mineral picture

If a cow isn’t responding to calcium, it may not be a simple case of milk fever. Chandler notes low phosphorus or magnesium are often at play.

The Action: If a cow’s response to treatment is poor, work with your vet to supplement phosphorus or magnesium and review your overall mineral protocols.

Long-Term Stability

8. Prioritize rumen health to support calcium

Rumen stress and inflammation can directly disrupt a cow’s ability to regulate calcium. Ametaj points out many transition cows exist in a chronic inflammatory state.

The Action: Protect the rumen by avoiding sudden starch increases. Push up feed frequently to prevent sorting and ensure the ration contains adequate effective fiber.

9. Avoid over-acidification

While DCAD is effective, more is not always better. Over-acidifying the diet can lead to a drop in dry matter intake, creating a new set of problems.

The Action: Regularly check urine pH. For Holsteins, aim for a target of 5.5 to 6.5. If you see intake drop, reassess the diet immediately.

10. Commit to a monthly program review

“Collaboration is the key to success,” Connelly says. A program that worked six months ago may need a tune-up today.

The Action: Meet monthly with your veterinarian and nutritionist to review fresh cow disease data, milk fever cases and blood calcium trends. Small, data-driven adjustments prevent major wrecks.

Watch the latest episode of The Bovine Vet Podcast focusing on milk fever here:

Zeolite Strategies Reshape Milk Fever Management on Dairy Farms

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:13:41 GMT

Milk fever remains one of the most well-known metabolic diseases in dairy cattle, yet it is far from solved. While clinical cases still occur on most farms, the larger — and often more costly — challenge lies beneath the surface: subclinical hypocalcemia.

That’s why transition cow management continues to be a critical focus for veterinarians and producers alike.

“If you have transition cow issues, you’re going to have metabolic issues. Cows aren’t going to come in and perform the way you think they should. You’re going to have repro issues. You’re going to see a whole host of effects,” Meghan Connelly says, research and technical director at Protekta and guest on the most recent episode of “The Bovine Vet Podcast” .

Against that backdrop, a growing number of nutritionists and veterinarians are turning to zeolite-based pre-fresh diets, a relatively new approach that is reshaping how the industry manages calcium metabolism during the transition period.

The Hidden Burden of Hypocalcemia in Dairy Cows

On most dairies, clinical milk fever rates fall between 1% and 5%, depending on herd management and nutrition strategies. Subclinical hypocalcemia, however, is far more prevalent, affecting an estimated 25% to 45% of cows in many herds.

Unlike clinical cases, subclinical hypocalcemia is difficult to detect — but no less important.

“Subclinical is where we can’t see it, but it’s happening. The cow has low blood calcium, but we can’t tell that she’s low. But that still has consequences for the cow. There’s all these different systems and calcium is such a critical mineral for all those systems. So many different diseases that are influenced by calcium status,” Connelly says.

Instead of obvious signs, these cows often present as subtle inefficiencies that compound over time. Reduced rumination, lower feed intake and increased rates of retained placenta, metritis and mastitis are all commonly linked to inadequate calcium status. These hidden cases can quietly erode both performance and profitability.

DCAD Diets: The Traditional Approach to Milk Fever Prevention

For decades, the primary strategy for preventing milk fever has been the negative DCAD (dietary cation-anion difference) diet, which works by inducing a mild metabolic acidosis that improves the cow’s responsiveness to parathyroid hormone (PTH).

“We feed different feed supplements that contain anions in order to drop urine pH. When urine pH drops, the system is primed for PTH to work and mobilize bone and help support calcium homeostasis when the cow calves,” Connelly says.

This approach is well validated and remains a cornerstone of transition cow nutrition. However, it comes with practical constraints that can limit its use, particularly in larger or more complex feeding systems.

Where DCAD can create friction:

Requires consistent access to low-potassium forages
Can reduce dry matter intake due to metabolic acidification
Depends on monitoring tools such as urine pH
Often still requires post-calving calcium supplementation

As operations scale and feed variability increases, these limitations have driven interest in alternative strategies that can deliver similar or improved outcomes with fewer constraints.

(Meghan Connelly)

How Zeolite Works: A New Strategy for Hypocalcemia Management

Zeolite offers a fundamentally different approach to milk fever prevention, one that targets phosphorus rather than acid-base balance.

“When we feed a zeolite diet pre-fresh, we bind dietary phosphorus. The cow goes, ‘Oh, I better go get more phosphorus.’ The main storage for phosphorus is in the bone. When she mobilizes bone, she brings double the amount of calcium with it,” Connelly says, referencing the P:Ca ratio in bone.

By binding dietary phosphorus in the gastrointestinal tract, zeolite creates a mild, controlled drop in blood phosphorus. The cow responds by mobilizing bone reserves to restore balance. Because bone contains both phosphorus and calcium in a fixed ratio, this process results in a simultaneous release of calcium into circulation.

Unlike DCAD diets, which rely on parathyroid hormone sensitivity, zeolite operates through a separate pathway involving fibroblast growth factor-23, a hormone produced in bone cells that acts on the kidneys to regulate phosphate levels, and vitamin D metabolism. The outcome — improved calcium availability at calving — is similar, but the biological mechanism is distinct.

Why Zeolite Adoption Is Increasing on Dairy Farms

Although zeolite has only been available in the U.S. since 2017, adoption has accelerated rapidly, according to Connelly. Much of that momentum is driven by a combination of visible on-farm results and meaningful management advantages.

Producers implementing zeolite programs often report improved calcium status through the first 48 to 72 hours after calving, along with fewer clinical milk fever cases.

“If you go from having 30 down cows a month to four, that’s a pretty big change,” Connelly says, referencing the improvement she has seen on farms changing to zeolite.

Beyond clinical outcomes, zeolite introduces greater flexibility into ration formulation. Because it does not depend on lowering dietary potassium, producers can incorporate a wider range of forages — including haylage, rye and sorghum — that would typically be restricted in DCAD programs. This allows better use of homegrown feeds and can reduce reliance on purchased inputs.

Zeolite programs are also associated with reduced dependence on calcium supplementation after calving. With cows already mobilizing calcium effectively, the need for boluses and intravenous treatments often declines, lowering both labor and treatment costs.

Management simplicity is another advantage. Zeolite eliminates the need for urine pH monitoring and reduces the number of adjustments required in close-up groups. In addition, because it does not induce metabolic acidosis, it avoids the intake suppression sometimes observed with DCAD diets, helping support dry matter intake during a critical window.

Where Zeolite May Not Be the Best Fit

Despite its advantages, zeolite is not universally applicable. Its effectiveness depends heavily on overall diet composition, particularly phosphorus levels.

Situations where DCAD may still be the better fit:

Diets high in phosphorus (e.g., distillers grains, canola meal)
Operations with well-optimized DCAD programs already in place
Systems where tight ration control supports consistent acidification

In high-phosphorus diets, zeolite may become saturated, allowing the absorption of the remaining free phosphorus, reducing its effectiveness and making DCAD the more reliable strategy.

A Technology Still Evolving and the Veterinarian’s Role

Compared to DCAD, which has decades of supporting research, zeolite remains a relatively new tool. Since its introduction in 2017, both research and field experience have rapidly expanded understanding of how best to implement it.

“We didn’t necessarily know everything about it when it came out. I like to say that we continue to learn in real time with this strategy,” Connelly says.

Advances in feeding guidelines, monitoring approaches and troubleshooting frameworks have already improved consistency across farms, and further refinement is expected as adoption continues.

As that evolution continues, veterinarians are playing an increasingly central role. Transition cow programs are becoming more nuanced, and selecting the right strategy requires more than simply choosing between DCAD and zeolite. It involves identifying herd-level challenges, interpreting blood calcium data and aligning protocols with nutrition and management realities on each operation.

Close collaboration between veterinarians, nutritionists and producers remains essential. No single approach fits every farm, and the most successful programs are those tailored to available feed resources, labor capacity and herd goals.

Zeolite is not a replacement for DCAD, it is an expansion of the milk fever management toolbox.

It represents a shift from priming calcium regulation through acidification to directly driving mineral mobilization through phosphorus control. For many dairies, that shift is delivering higher blood calcium, fewer clinical cases and simpler management during one of the most critical periods in the production cycle.

As the industry continues to refine its use, zeolite is quickly moving from a novel concept to a practical, field-proven strategy in transition cow nutrition.

To hear more from Connelly on using zeolite for the management of transition cows to avoid hypocalcemia, listen to the full conversation on the latest episode of “The Bovine Vet Podcast.”

Rethinking Milk Fever in Dairy Cows: How the Immune System Impacts Calcium Levels

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 22:54:01 GMT

Milk fever has long been framed as a calcium problem. But what if that framing is too narrow and part of the reason prevention strategies don’t always deliver consistent results?

Work from Burim Ametaj , Professor at the University of Alberta and recent guest on “The Bovine Vet Podcast” , is helping reframe hypocalcemia through what he terms the calci-inflammatory network — a model that links calcium dynamics directly to immune function during the transition period.

A Common Problem, Often Hidden

Milk fever remains one of the most widespread metabolic disorders in dairy cattle, but much of its impact is hidden in subclinical cases.

“Milk fever is widespread, but now we have this subclinical part of milk fever that is not visible. You need to get a blood sample to measure calcium to determine, based on the concentration of calcium in blood, whether the cow is going through subclinical milk fever or clinical milk fever,” Ametaj says.

These subclinical cases lack obvious signs, yet they are consistently linked to reduced intake, impaired immune function and increased risk of diseases such as mastitis , metritis and ketosis.

Despite decades of focus on calcium supplementation and DCAD strategies, hypocalcemia remains prevalent. This has prompted a closer look at the underlying biology.

(Farm Journal)

Total Versus Ionized Calcium: A Critical Distinction

A key refinement in this emerging framework is the distinction between total calcium and ionized calcium. While total calcium is commonly measured, much of it is bound to proteins like albumin or other molecules. Only a fraction exists as ionized calcium — the biologically active form required for muscle contraction, nerve signaling and immune cell function.

This distinction has important implications for treatment. While calcium borogluconate is a known treatment for hypocalcemia in cattle, Ametaj suggests it may not be ideal for ionized calcium availability.

“What happens?” asks Ametaj about blood ionized calcium levels when an animal receives calcium borogluconate. “It is decreased, in fact. In 1985 , there was a scientist who injected sheep with calcium borogluconate. He reported that ionized calcium decreased.”

Calcium therapy can improve clinical signs, particularly in recumbent cows, but it may not consistently restore the functional calcium pool. This helps explain why some cows respond only temporarily or relapse after treatment.

A Shift in Thinking: Hypocalcemia as Part of Immunity

Ametaj’s work proposes a fundamental shift in how hypocalcemia is interpreted — not simply as a failure of calcium supply, but as part of a broader physiological response.

“Hypocalcemia is important, because it’s not a deficiency, but part of immunity,” Ametaj says. “That’s where the entire new concept starts.”

In this model, calcium dynamics are closely tied to immune activity, particularly during the stress of calving and early lactation.

This model builds on another important shift: transition cows are not immunosuppressed, but are actively responding to inflammatory signals.

“Usually, the dogma is that the cows around calving are immunosuppressed, but in fact, they are mounting an immune response, especially the innate immunity is very active and acute phase response,” Ametaj explains.

Inflammatory markers begin to rise weeks before calving and peak around parturition. Cytokines such as TNF-alpha, interleukin-1 and interleukin-6, along with acute phase proteins, are consistently elevated during this period. Rather than a failure of immunity, this suggests the cow is managing a significant inflammatory load at the same time she is adapting metabolically to lactation.

In the framework of the calci-inflammatory network, bacterial endotoxins from conditions like mastitis or acidosis trigger an inflammatory response that suppresses parathyroid hormone secretion. This cascade ultimately inhibits calcium absorption and bone resorption, leading to hypocalcemia, commonly known as milk fever in cattle.

(Farm Journal)

Endotoxin: A Likely Trigger

One of the proposed drivers of this inflammation is endotoxin, or lipopolysaccharide (LPS), originating from the gastrointestinal tract.

Transition diets high in fermentable carbohydrates can lower rumen pH, disrupt epithelial integrity and increase endotoxin release and absorption. As rumen conditions become more acidic, Gram-negative bacteria break down and release LPS into the rumen environment.

“When you feed different amounts of grain, you increase the amount of endotoxin in the rumen fluid by 18- to 20-fold,” Ametaj says, noting these shifts were also seen in the blood along with changes in cytokines and acute phase proteins.

Once endotoxin enters circulation, it contributes to systemic inflammation, linking nutritional management directly to immune activation. The immune system responds rapidly to endotoxin exposure by activating macrophages and triggering signaling pathways designed to neutralize and remove the threat.

“If macrophages are activated, they release pro-inflammatory cytokines: tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-1, interleukin-6. Why do they do that? Because they invite more cells, immune cells, to come there to remove endotoxin,” Ametaj explains.

This response is essential, but also metabolically demanding. Nutrients and minerals are redirected to support immune function, and physiology shifts to prioritize survival over production.

Calcium as an Active Player in Immunity

Within this framework, calcium is not simply a nutrient to maintain but an active participant in immune function.

One key role is in endotoxin handling. Lipopolysaccharide carries a strong negative charge, allowing calcium to bind and promote aggregation. This clustering makes endotoxin easier for immune cells to recognize and remove.

“Endotoxin is very negatively charged. And calcium binds to molecules of endotoxin and brings them together and creates aggregates,” Ametaj explains.

Endotoxin can also bind to lipoproteins in circulation and be transported to the liver, where it is neutralized and excreted in bile. This process is rapid and tightly regulated, linking inflammatory load to liver function and lipid metabolism.

Together, these pathways suggest calcium is being actively used and redistributed during immune responses, not simply depleted.

Current Strategies

Current approaches to milk fever focus on increasing calcium availability, either through supplementation or dietary strategies, such as DCAD. These tools remain valuable, but they operate within a more complex biological system than previously appreciated.

“By triggering metabolic acidosis, you also trigger elimination of calcium from the blood through urine outside. Why? Because calcium and other cationic ions bind these acids, and they are eliminated,” Ametaj says.

DCAD programs improve calcium mobilization, but they also shift systemic mineral balance. Similarly, calcium therapy can resolve clinical signs without addressing the underlying drivers of inflammation. This may help explain why these strategies work well in some situations but inconsistently in others.

What This Means for Veterinarians and Producers

This evolving perspective does not replace current practices, but it does broaden the approach to prevention.

In addition to managing calcium, attention may need to shift toward upstream factors that influence both inflammation and mineral balance, including:

Maintaining rumen stability and avoiding sharp drops in pH
Managing starch levels and fermentation rates
Supporting gut barrier integrity
Reducing systemic inflammatory load

These areas may offer opportunities to improve consistency in transition cow outcomes.

The immune–calcium network offers a more integrated way to understand milk fever — one that connects metabolism, inflammation and mineral dynamics.

Rather than asking only how to raise calcium status, a more useful question may be: Why is calcium low in the first place?

Answering that question may be key to improving transition cow health and to making existing prevention strategies work more consistently.

To hear more from Ametaj on the immune-calcium network and the management of transition cows to avoid hypocalcemia, listen to the full conversation on the latest episode of “The Bovine Vet Podcast.”

Why We Need Technology and Human Expertise to Close The Mastitis Detection Gap

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:51:55 GMT

Mastitis detection remains constrained by parlor realities. Modern dairies are designed to maximize throughput, leaving little margin for detailed milk inspection on every cow at every milking. Even highly trained milkers can overlook subtle milk changes or early signs of disease when operating under fatigue, time pressure and competing demands.

“With how fast parlors are being pushed, workers are asked to milk more cows in shorter amounts of time. To look at and examine milk thoroughly for 8- or 12-hour shifts, it doesn’t always happen on every single cow,” says Dr. Justin Hess of Clinton Veterinary Services. “You’d be amazed at how much you can actually miss.”

Subclinical mastitis is particularly vulnerable to underdetection because it requires intentional testing that is accompanied by labor, cost and workflow implications.

Improving mastitis outcomes depends less on detection itself and more on what happens afterward. Farms today are generating more information than ever, but that information does not automatically translate into better decisions. Sound mastitis protocols need to be in place and understood by all on a dairy.

“If you try to develop a protocol, and the management team isn’t on board and you don’t have the right people in place, you’re going to struggle and probably make things more difficult,” Hess explains. “We like to keep things simple but effective.”

These protocols largely include management choices surrounding animal density, mastitis detection methods and even the choice of bedding in the stalls.

Concerning mastitis detection methods, on-farm culturing demonstrates the tension between simple and complex protocols well.

(Rose Memories Photography LLC)

“Culturing on-farm can be a struggle because of the increase in labor and having a dedicated person to do it. You also need the knowledge and desire to do it and do it correctly,” Hess says.

When farms have dedicated personnel, clear interpretation guidelines and confidence in how results will be used, culturing can reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and improve outcomes. When those conditions are absent, culturing may delay treatment without changing behavior, prompting farms to revert to broad-spectrum approaches for the sake of speed.

The challenge isn’t just the size of the farm, but the speed at which data must be converted into a treatment decision.

As the limitations of manual culturing and visual inspection become more apparent, the industry is shifting toward passive detection — systems that monitor the cow without requiring extra labor hours.

To address the complexity of dairy systems, Dr. Alon Arazi, chief veterinarian at Afimilk, hopes consolidating data generated by monitoring animals in existing protocols will help refine management and improve animal health.

“All this data is being gathered into one piece of software in which we do the analysis to detect mastitis,” Arazi says.

Sensor systems can also be used to detect mastitis based on deviations from the norm at a cow level. This baseline varies for each cow, meaning you need historical data for comparison.

“The main way to detect mastitis is based on what’s normal [for that animal]. Increased conductivity of a cow or dropped lactose to a lower level than is expected. This is mainly happening with clinical mastitis,” Arazi says. “One of the problems with subclinical mastitis is that the changes sometimes are very, very low and very hard to detect. In that case, we are looking for more and more sophisticated modeling algorithms that combine more and more things together to see things that are just starting to change.”

Mastitis Indicators Used in Automated Monitoring Systems

Automated monitoring systems identify cows suspected of mastitis by analyzing multiple milk and cow-level parameters simultaneously, rather than relying on a single signal. Key indicators include:

Milk conductivity
- Increased electrical conductivity associated with changes in ion flow during mastitis
- One of the primary and earliest milk signals used
Milk yield
- Sudden or unexpected drops in production relative to the cow’s baseline
Lactose concentration
- Decreases in lactose production when udder function is impaired
- Possible lactose leakage from milk or utilization by bacteria
Milk flow / milking dynamics
- Changes in milk flow rate that may reflect udder discomfort or inflammation
Rumination patterns
- Decreases in rumination associated with illness or discomfort
Eating behavior / dry matter intake
- Reduced intake relative to expected performance
Activity and behavior changes
- Deviations from individual cow behavioral baselines

This collected data is then compared and put into context on the individual, group and herd levels. Mastitis alerts are generated by combining multiple indicators, rather than any single threshold.

These disparate data points, along with the sheer volume of data, are where machine learning thrives.

“AI or machine learning will allow you to detect things that, even for us, are hard to see now. This for sure will improve subclinical detection,” Arazi predicts.

These systems aim to provide directional insight that shortens the time between detection and action by reducing the workload and finding changes in cow performance before they would be noticed by a worker. Catching a case 24 hours earlier could be the difference between a quick recovery and a culled cow.

“You don’t have to check every cow because the system has checked every cow two or three times in a day depending on how many milkings there are,” Arazi says. “You get the information, and you get the option to catch things earlier than people can see with their eyes.”

The Human Filter: Why Detection Requires Interpretation

Alerts without context quickly become noise. High alert frequency, poor specificity or unclear next steps can erode trust in the system. This is where veterinary intervention can help a dairy understand what they’re seeing and how best to act.

Hess stressed the questions he poses to dairies implementing updated mastitis detection protocols: “When you have that information, what are you going to do with that information? Are you going to actually change your protocols?”

Having more data is only useful for improving animal management if accompanied by a plan to act on what that data is telling you.

(Afimilk)

Technologies offering continuous observation and reduced reliance on human detection can introduce risks related to accuracy, workflow fit and trust. There is also the worry of false alerts.

“We can still improve accuracy, reduce false alerts and get more sensitivity,” Arazi says, speaking on the Afimilk system for mastitis detection.

These systems are, of course, not infallible. As with all hardware, there are uncontrollable hiccups that need to be considered when looking at the data generated.

“There are some critical parts of measuring conductivity,” Hess says. “If milk is moving or if air gets into the system, it can affect the sensitivity or the reading on it.”

At their core, these tools are designed to flag abnormal patterns, not to dictate diagnoses or management decisions. Alerts of deviations are only meaningful after interpretation by people who understand the cows, the parlor and the operation of the farm. Without the human layer, accurate detection risks becoming background noise.

“The only thing worse than no data is having wrong or misleading data,” Hess says.

The limitation is not simply technological, but decisional. This becomes most apparent when detection systems skew too far toward sensitivity at the expense of specificity. Highly sensitive tools identify earlier or more subtle changes, but they also generate more false positives. Each unnecessary alert pulls time and attention away from other priorities.

At the other end of the spectrum, overly specific systems may miss early disease signals, limiting their preventative value. Effective mastitis detection depends on deliberate trade-offs, favoring actionable accuracy over alert volume. The future of the dairy isn’t just in the data collecting sensors, but in how the person in the office uses that data to provide better care for the cow.

How Technology is Changing the Game in Mastitis Prevention and Detection

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:24:02 GMT

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.”

(Rose Memories Photography LLC)

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.

(Afimilk)

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.”

(Photo: Rose Memories Photography LLC)

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.