Cows with both clinical and subclinical mastitis will have increased somatic cell counts in their milk. When there are a number of high somatic cell count cows contributing to the vat, this may cause the bulk milk somatic cell count to exceed 400,000 causing you to grade. You will receive financial penalties from the milk company for this grade. Fortunately we have accredited vets who can help you out if you are grading or even if you are just wanting to improve your milk quality.
If you haven’t had a recent herd test, an easy way to identify problem cows and stop them contributing to the vat milk is to RMT test the whole herd. This may be referred to as a grade bust. RMT is a fast, cow side test that uses a detergent solution to bind to DNA in the somatic cells in the milk – the more somatic cells, the thicker the milk/detergent solution. Usually milk samples are also taken from a proportion of these RMT positive cows to determine what mastitis pathogens are present; this helps identify if we are dealing with environmental or contagious spread of mastitis or if both are contributing. If you are grading, we aim to have a vet and vet technicians on farm as soon as possible to conduct the grade bust and stop you grading. While we want milking to be as normal as possible, you can expect things to be a bit slower.
Often we will also conduct a milking visit to help diagnose problems on your farm; this is often a separate visit to a grade bust visit. Things we will look at include:
- Teat condition
- Milking process including milking time and cow flow
- Teat spray assessment
- Milking machine – it helps to have a copy of your most recent milking machine test available
- Assessment of the environment
If you are a Fonterra farmer with grading problems, any financial penalties from grading can be used against the cost of investigation – sometimes this means that you don’t have to pay anything for the investigation. If you aren’t a Fonterra farmer, or your accrued grading penalties only cover a proportion of the cost we still think a mastitis investigation is a great investment in improving milk quality on your farm.
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