I always feed milk from the cows. Much better for the animals. How about trying to mixing in some diatomaceous earth DE. I use 1 cup per 50-80 litres, once per day, never had one case of scours.
Feeding antibiotic milk to calves
- Thread starter it's not over
- Start date
- Location
- South Molton
What does the DE do?
Calves come out of cows asses and are meant to drink the milk from their mothers tits. Period.
If you want to die from sh!t in the milk, then keep telling me sealers are bad.
- Location
- South Molton
I use it in cubicles.
Have half a ton here atm
- Location
- South Molton
How does it tell the difference between the good and bad bugs?
organicguy
Member
- Location
- North East of the south west
???
I never said sealers were bad,just question whether you need them. There’s an awful lot of Willy waving goes on in this forum. Check out the milk price thread,everybody has cows averaging 30 litres at 250 DIM. These high yielders will probably need a sealer. My goats that will only be giving 10 litres or less at drying off so will have a naturally smaller sphincter. In my opinion a lot of xbred/ lower yielding herds don’t need to seal.
Whitewalker
Member
I’m the same, we try to get yield down as low as possible sub 10 also and even less if possible. We’re recording again and selective dct . I question the sealing for us too . However we questioned the antibiotics and have cut most out and maybe sealer is next . It used to take a month before the udder was reduced and then a month to recover was my thinking but now the udder is next to nothing very quickly. I
- Location
- somerset
i doubt a cow giving 30l + at drying off, actually 'dries' her udder completely out, 4/5 weeks to 'lose' milk, then starts to 'spring', How many times have you seen dry cows, freshly tubed/sealed, turned out, a good frolic, and seen a bit of milk drip out ?
years ago, we used to pick out the cows being dried off, before they went into the collecting yard, each afternoon, 7 days, then tubed, changed that, to a straw and water diet, which worked well. As a 'general' rule of thumb, the diff between hols and xbred fr, is the hol will keep milking, whereas the x's tend to dry themselves off, as the time nears, and as you say, a cow giving 10 lt, is very different to one giving 30. DCtubes, when they came in, were seen as a miracle, and every cow was tubed, then we had sealant, again another super drug, only came in recently, and had to alter for the cheese contracts. But i agree entirely that the 10 lt cow, at drying off, has no real need of sealant, because there is no milk 'residue' left in the udder, but vets and makers, have done a great job of selling it as a must have treatment. There is a huge difference between a low yielding cow, at drying off, compared to the hol, at 30 lt, presumably the udder is dried 'out' for a longer period, giving an increased period, for nature to heal the udder, of any nasties, perhaps we err on the side of caution, in tubing and sealing lower yielding cows. One thing is certain, pressure will be applied to decrease the use of a/b in animals, we wouldn't be so keen to tube, if rules are changed, so that vets have to administer a/b, including tubes ! And that time is fast approaching, alas.
I milk cows oad the week prior to drying off. Then maybe once every two days before going to dry cow house with baled haylage. If still giving too much they will go onto straw diet for a couple of days. A vet told me I was totally wrong,cows needed to be dried off abruptly. Tried it. One cow lost two quarters..big swelled bag. Didn’t want to draw it and lose the sealer. It wasn’t swelled with milk. Mastitis.
Farmer Keith
Member
- Location
- North Cumbria
As well as that may work for you I’m sure that would be totally impractical at scale, Plenty of folk milking 000’s of cows need a realistic option and sealant provides that. id be concerned by it from a mastitis perspective anyways one thing that seems common when you speak to block calvers who go OAD at the end of lactation is SCC goes up not down but I stand to be corrected if anyone has any different experiences?
- Location
- somerset
vets used to tell you, you need to tube every cow at drying off, then we had to use sealant, now DC tube are bad, and we should reduce their use. But, as i posted, 40 yrs ago we were drying cows off slowly, and they didn't give the amounts of milk, they do today, can't remember to much trouble at calving, with mastitus, but that could be selective memory ! Perhaps the slow drying off is a better way, more so with the higher yielding cows, and perhaps the cows natural plug, will replace sealant ! On the other hand, summer mastitus is seldom seen here now, 30/40 yrs ago it was a right pain, we had a bunch of 90 i/c hfrs, and were getting a fair few, dad rung the vets, who suggested tubing the lot, half were my cousins, so agreed he would do his, i would do ours, his comments on the first one, are unprintable, and no more were done, instead, we used collodion, liquid plastic skin, just dipped them, end of problem, so from that view, sealants could be good !
just read the previous post, we pick cows out for all sorts of reasons, AI vets feet etc, so a group of oad shouldn't be a big problem, especially if works well.
- Location
- Warwickshire
Out of interest, would you have any milk test results from 40 years ago showing SCC
- Location
- somerset
no, but i think the thresholds were higher, but would be very interesting to see them ! Pal tried the 6week dry period, with his 10,000 liter holstiens, i can assure you that doesn't work, with them, and yet it was 'pushed' for the latest, bestish idea.
- Location
- Warwickshire
I suspect there were many herds with a SCC of a million in the 70s and it was probably acceptable in those days.
I agree that 6 weeks isn't long enough dry for a high yielding herd.
Personally we use selective dry cow therapy, probably 80% are seal only, the rest have Ubro Red with a seal
farmer on a bike
Member
We have started teat sealing heifers and it has dramatically reduced calving time mastitis in our heifers from over 30% to below 5%. On our spring herd we tried not using it a few years ago, pretty disastrous results, never to be repeated. Teat seal is a brilliant product and a game changer for antibiotic use. Looks like next stage is individual quarter treatment.
it's not over
Member
- Location
- thunder rd co.antrim
If youd nearly 1 in 3 heifers with mastitis theres something else wrong
farmer on a bike
Member
It built up year on year, strep uberis. We do have continued severe wart problems which certainly don’t help, with rotting flesh around the teat end on some heifers. We are not by any means the only farm who have had this experience, and it was really frustrating and depressing. This was also despite reasonably low levels of calving time mastitis in cows, but they were already having teat seal.