Vaccination for the control of mastitis
In this video you will have the opportunity to meet the Dijkstra family, their organic dairy farm and their use of a key tool in the prevention of any disease, vaccination.
The Dijkstra family have a large organic dairy farm in the Netherlands with 80 cows (and milk production of 8,380 kg per year). And have use robot milking.
They detected problems in the cows’ dry period, with clinical cases that showed up in the form of very swollen udders.
All this resulted in problems because of the need to cull animals, the increase in veterinary costs.… The sustainability of the farm was at stake!
The farm’s veterinarian identified that the principal pathogen responsible for these cases was Staph. aureus and Non-Aureus Staphylococci. Because of the farm’s commitment to organic production, the use of antibiotics was not an option…
So they decided to go for a key tool in the prevention of any disease, vaccination, in this case vaccination against mastitis with STARTVAC®. Which, together with the control measures necessary for the control of contagious pathogens, “quickly” produced results, “the somatic cell counts (SCC) and treatments were reduced by half” and “culling because of mastitis decreased from 50% to only 10%”
In the words of the farm’s veterinarian “vaccination really is worthwhile” “the use of treatments has decreased, and the working environment has improved”.