Mastitis and High Cell count bolus

[Scholsey]

Where do you get the AHV boluses from?

 

[Mr Jones]

Hi everyone.
I am needing urgent advice as our bactoscan/TBC is through the roof

It has been up until recently, ALWAYS below 10.....normally 4 and it has now progressively gone up.

Looking back on records.....it has increased from day one when we started to use a mastitis bolus..treating high cell counts with bolus and still putting milk in tank. That was in August. The next test revealed a TBC of 46 .. And it has got worse!
It was never at anytime mentioned about the possibility of causing a high bactoscan. The salesman kept emphasizing that it would reduce SCC. We have replaced liners, checked bulk tank, replaced pipes and the next step is looking at the plate cooler. We can only do one thing at a time and the NMR IT crisis isn't helping much. Plus the fact our milk processor only can get results to us once a week . I thank them for their patience.
So....in order to avoid penalties in OCT supply we now are DUMPING all milk from cows treated for mastitis and using antibiotics, in the hope that our bactoscan figure will go back to normal.
Can our recent high TBC just be a coincidence? I thought so too until I read this article....
Mastitic Organisms Mastitis is a common cause of bacterial contamination. Milk from a healthy quarter will have low bacterial levels, usually under 1,000/ml. When quarters become infected with clinical mastitis, the numbers of bacteria can increase substantially. Streptococcus agalactiae is shed in extremely high numbers from clinically infected quarters, up to 100,000,000/ml. Strep uberis can produce the same effect.
Does the above suggest......WE are doing the harm by putting the milk into the bulk tank?
Please advise.

I wouldn't fanny around with boluses, sub clinical mastitis treat with mamyzin, if they don't respond to a course of that. There's the other option.

 

[Piper771]

To answer a question.... Can the AHV extra bolus.....increase the bactoscan results as the milk is not dumped, so goes into the tank .
It did reduce the SCC of some cows . But I think that is where the danger lies. I maybe wrong but can't find any info online to back this up.

I would love to have this info available so I can present this to the salesman when next he calls.

We have resorted back to using antibiotics to treat mastitis and forgetting about the bolus.
We thought we would give it a try.
Perhaps its more suited for the beef farmer.....suckler herd.
What are your thoughts?

 

[awkward]

To answer a question.... Can the AHV extra bolus.....increase the bactoscan results as the milk is not dumped, so goes into the tank .
It did reduce the SCC of some cows . But I think that is where the danger lies. I maybe wrong but can't find any info online to back this up.

I would love to have this info available so I can present this to the salesman when next he calls.

We have resorted back to using antibiotics to treat mastitis and forgetting about the bolus.
We thought we would give it a try.
Perhaps its more suited for the beef farmer.....suckler herd.
What are your thoughts?

You plant is dirty somewhere if you are getting high tbc. Scc wont impact on tbc. That has been my experience

 

[RushesToo]

Somewhere on here there is a thread on getting good bugs in the environment, @JP1 can you apply your encyclopaedic knowledge to this. [Sorry if I have mis-remembered this as I believe it may be concerned with feet rather than udders]

 

[Bogeyman]

Gave AVH a wee trial, just the highest 4 cows on my milk recording action list. Now done 3rd recording since bolus went in, the two worst were 6000 odd and 4000 odd and tank was sampling in 400’s. Figures now are 3000 odd and 1000 odd and tank 150’s. However the lower of the two cows still strips out some dirt at start of milking while the higher cow never stripped anything and the milk sock has never been dirty. The other 2 cows bolused are in the 100’s.

Apologies for the ramble . Not an extensive test but as I bought a box of 10 will use them up and possibly get to a conclusion then.

 

[Shep]

I bought a box as well, they seemed to work until I ran out and just stripped a couple of cows for a week without a bolus and they got better too
£40 a piece, OK if they work, but they are very expensive mustard seeds if they don't.

 

[Piper771]

Bactoscan down to 2....was previously always in single figures. Must have been the milk tank.. never got to check the plate cooler.
Did milk recording recently.. very mixed results on usage of avh bolus.
Some cured themselves... Others despite using bolus and antibiotics are near to a million! Going for cull
The best results were on 1st calvers... given one bolus and nothing else
The jury is still out. I am not entirely convinced and my wife is more sceptical. Needs more discussion on others experiences

 

[celtis man]

Bactoscan down to 2....was previously always in single figures. Must have been the milk tank.. never got to check the plate cooler.
Did milk recording recently.. very mixed results on usage of avh bolus.
Some cured themselves... Others despite using bolus and antibiotics are near to a million! Going for cull
The best results were on 1st calvers... given one bolus and nothing else
The jury is still out. I am not entirely convinced and my wife is more sceptical. Needs more discussion on others experiences

Anything over a 1000 on scc needs to be treated quickly with antibiotics really culling is the only answer.
The wife just said to me that infected cows make your bactoscan higher as they are bacteria so culling is the real answer.

 

[Piper771]

(wife here) To me it doesnt make sense to let high cell count milk to go into the tank and not expect a high bactoscan. He thinks it was the bulk tank that was the cause of our problem. Since we STOPPED using the ahv bolus and returned to antibiotic use.. things have gone back to how they were before.. Getting ALL bonus payments. But he wont listen... and typical male.. doesnt like to be proven wrong! If the ahv bolus was so fantastic ALL dairy farmers would be using them.. There has to be drawbacks? Is there a cover up?

 

[lazy farmer]

Personally I think these things are a coincidence. I don’t think the bolus did anything. What you saw was younger cows achieve a natural cure which would have happen anyway and cows with a chronic problem maintain there status. Then you had an issue with your tank which once resolved saw your Bacto return to its normal fantastic levels.
about 10% is mastitis cases cause a Bacto issue. from what had been written here I don’t feel yours was one of them.

 

[Piper771]

I wished we hadn't even tried them. All was well before we started but what appealed was the thought of not dumping milk and not using antibotics.
We were told not to use the bolus on chronic cows......they won't respond . But he did use it on them and the SCC on those hit the million mark and the milk went into the tank! Our milk recording SCC went up to 377.............. from 146. Thats very very high for us.

 

[Princess Pooper]

I wished we hadn't even tried them. All was well before we started but what appealed was the thought of not dumping milk and not using antibotics.
We were told not to use the bolus on chronic cows......they won't respond . But he did use it on them and the SCC on those hit the million mark and the milk went into the tank! Our milk recording SCC went up to 377.............. from 146. Thats very very high for us.

Not to make light of your troubles, but this might strike a chord!!!! (taken from stress survey thread)

..... One important point - which is really a separate study - the stress of a farmer's wife can be different from the stress of a farmer for a whole host of reasons!

 

[Wishful Thinker]

I used them and a similar one by mayo health care.
Put my scc up when I used one but can’t comment on bacto had few issues with robot cleaning at time.
If I saw a high conductivity, I first went with udder mint. If still high stuck bolus in. Some worked, some didn’t but has been said above they may have cured themselves.
Only thing I noticed any that got it and returned to normal are now light in that quarter, maybe same would have happened with a tube, all new to me.

 

[Bogeyman]

Just a question that i was asked regarding success or not of the blouses. Are the farms with most success crossbreeding herds and so also gaining from hybrid vigour. My herd is pure Holstein and i have mixed response to the bolus

 

[the hoof man]

Just to add a little extra to the conversation about udder health boluses - Dairy farms across Europe have been using garlic based boluses for the past 8-10 years with really positive results.
This has largely been driven by the fact that they cannot just order up an antibiotic and then self administer themselves any more and it has to be done by the vet.

Allicin the garlic derivative (used in some boluses) has many reviewed papers supporting it's beneficial effect on reducing gram + & gram - bacteria, I cannot comment on the AHV vitamin style bolus.

We have over 80 farms now using an Allicin & protected zinc bolus called 'ACTOCILLIN' and the on farm data (before & after milk recording) is showing really positive results.

Is it a magic bullet - No, is it a significant part of the jigsaw puzzle - Yes I actually think it is.

It is typically being used in later lactation cows 250+ days and cows with cell counts of multi millions - Cows that stubborn, persistent cases, possibly where other treatments have failed?

These are not the ideal cows, we need to be targeting the cow on the rise, the cow sub 500,000 get her down to below 200,000 before she becomes part of the millionaire club with all the other stubborn offenders.

I have many cows that have been in the millions before receiving a bolus and then dropping to well below the million, these cows are still have an infection and will definitely require a further treatment (21 days after the first treatment).

With my 80+ farms using it, i can say with confidence that 4 out of 5 cow's will show a positive response to a treatment with a double ACTOCILLIN bolus, by positive I mean their cell counts will halve (at least).

No bulk tank taint as long as a maximum of 5% of the total milking number is not treated at any one time (5 cows treated in every 100 in milk) - Zero milk withdrawal, although some soft clotting may be seen on the high subclinical cell count cows following treatment.

Check out on line the benefits of Allicin as an antimicrobial, plenty of papers to review.

All we are trying to do is extend the effective life of the antibiotics that we currently have available and every time we reach for a tube of antibiotics it brings us one step closer to losing another drug.

 

[Farmer Fin]

Just to add a little extra to the conversation about udder health boluses - Dairy farms across Europe have been using garlic based boluses for the past 8-10 years with really positive results.
This has largely been driven by the fact that they cannot just order up an antibiotic and then self administer themselves any more and it has to be done by the vet.

Allicin the garlic derivative (used in some boluses) has many reviewed papers supporting it's beneficial effect on reducing gram + & gram - bacteria, I cannot comment on the AHV vitamin style bolus.

We have over 80 farms now using an Allicin & protected zinc bolus called 'ACTOCILLIN' and the on farm data (before & after milk recording) is showing really positive results.

Is it a magic bullet - No, is it a significant part of the jigsaw puzzle - Yes I actually think it is.

It is typically being used in later lactation cows 250+ days and cows with cell counts of multi millions - Cows that stubborn, persistent cases, possibly where other treatments have failed?

These are not the ideal cows, we need to be targeting the cow on the rise, the cow sub 500,000 get her down to below 200,000 before she becomes part of the millionaire club with all the other stubborn offenders.

I have many cows that have been in the millions before receiving a bolus and then dropping to well below the million, these cows are still have an infection and will definitely require a further treatment (21 days after the first treatment).

With my 80+ farms using it, i can say with confidence that 4 out of 5 cow's will show a positive response to a treatment with a double ACTOCILLIN bolus, by positive I mean their cell counts will halve (at least).

No bulk tank taint as long as a maximum of 5% of the total milking number is not treated at any one time (5 cows treated in every 100 in milk) - Zero milk withdrawal, although some soft clotting may be seen on the high subclinical cell count cows following treatment.

Check out on line the benefits of Allicin as an antimicrobial, plenty of papers to review.

All we are trying to do is extend the effective life of the antibiotics that we currently have available and every time we reach for a tube of antibiotics it brings us one step closer to losing another drug.View attachment 843825

Ok give me some links to your peer reviewed papers so I can make an informed decision.

 

[the hoof man]

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b04378#



https://www.agriland.ie/farming-new...c-udder-care-solution-to-irish-dairy-farmers/



http://animalhealth.allimax.nl/?page_id=122&lang=en



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976



https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb5b/df08b6ce14e21b72877a5716fd3264e37632.pdf



http://www.jbc.org/content/291/22/11477.full

 

[Farmer Fin]

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b04378#



https://www.agriland.ie/farming-new...c-udder-care-solution-to-irish-dairy-farmers/



http://animalhealth.allimax.nl/?page_id=122&lang=en



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976



https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb5b/df08b6ce14e21b72877a5716fd3264e37632.pdf



http://www.jbc.org/content/291/22/11477.full

Thanks.

These are either lab based,
relating to mice or marketing material. No peer reviewed evidence backing up your claims about its effect in a cow udder.

When I did a quick search I found a masters paper looking at cows treated with these boluses and high cell counts. It found no difference between them and a placebo.

 

[Farmer Fin]

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b04378#



https://www.agriland.ie/farming-new...c-udder-care-solution-to-irish-dairy-farmers/



http://animalhealth.allimax.nl/?page_id=122&lang=en



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976



https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb5b/df08b6ce14e21b72877a5716fd3264e37632.pdf



http://www.jbc.org/content/291/22/11477.full

Thanks.

These are either lab based,
relating to mice or marketing material. No peer reviewed evidence backing up your claims about its effect in a cow udder.

When I did a quick search I found a masters paper looking at cows treated with these boluses and high cell counts. It found no difference between them and a placebo.