Meet Fazenda Colorado (Brazil) and their experience with vaccination against mastitis

We move to Brazil to visit Fazenda Colorado, a dairy cow farm. Years ago, they decided to grow in capacity and productivity, and now they have 1,900 cows and an average production of 77,000 L/d. We have interviewed Sergio Soriano, the Veterinary and Livestock manager of the farm, to know more about their management of udder health. Watch the video and discover how they solved their problems regarding milk quality and mastitis.

What were the main issues regarding udder health?

• High SCC: it was a big challenge to improve figures
• Low milk quality: this is related to the SCC, but also to new infections and mastitis rate.

SCC and new infections are a very important milk quality indicators that need to be monitored.

The focus of the daily work on farm must be on the milk quality and not treating cows; that’s why having a high incidence of mastitis is a big problem.

• Use of antibiotics: it has high economic impact

What is the economic impact of mastitis?

• Loss of production: mostly in early lactation
• Culling of animals
• Milk discarded: the replacement has a high cost, and when you have to discard the milk in the first lactation, it has a significant impact.
• Reproductive performance: Mastitis is related with low fertility or pregnancy losses

Why did Colorado decided to start vaccination ?

They wanted to have a more prepared and resilient  cow´s immune system , to reduce problems related to mastitis.

From the first moment it was clear that Startvac was a great opportunity for Colorado.. A vaccine with wide spectrum, that could protect the cow throughout the whole lactation and reduce losses.

Sergio was aware that to prevent is cheaper than to treat.

What were the main benefits from vaccination?

• Better immune status: it was the main benefit. The herd responded much better to each vaccination.
• Reduced number of mastitis cases
• Reduction in SCC and more milk

“Sergio: After vaccination we have fewer cows on treatment, spend less with drugs, we have more milk and better milk quality”

• Milk quality index

After vaccination, they have the best historical number of SCC: 150,000 cel/ml

Also, they have reduced the incidence of new infections to <10%, and the 80% of animals have <200.000 SCC.

Would he recommend vaccination to other farmers and vets?

Vaccination is a good investment, because you will improve health and productive performance of animals.

Moreover, thanks to the collaboration with the HIPRA team, they achieved the best results.