Each year, AHI gives dairy farmers recognition for having low somatic cell counts (SCCs) through their CellCheck Milking for Quality Awards. The best 500 will be invited to attend the national awards ceremony on 24 November in the Green Isle Hotel, Dublin. They are all within a range of 37,000 cells/ml to 97,000 cells/ml, AHI reported in its latest newsletter.

In this era of antimicrobial resistance, lowering SCCs comes with the added challenge of cutting down on our use of antibiotics.

Mike Magan’s experience of drying off

I’m no saint when it comes to boring jobs and will cut corners with the best to get in for breakfast, so we limit the number of cows to dry off on any given day to ensure that we spend enough time with each cow to do the job properly.

We mark them clearly as we do them and they are separated to avoid the “oh **** I just let a recently dried off cow into the tank” situation! We use medicated wipes to clean the teat, especially the teat end, using one wipe per teat. Containers of centre-pull wipes are good to have and avoid having to tear open individual wipes.

I use a “cyclops” headlight to make sure I can see what I’m doing and to avoid unnecessary poking around trying to find the orifice. I dip the teat in a 10% iodine solution before they are let out to stand for a while before they lie down. It’s no problem when they can go straight to a paddock but if they are going to a shed then it’s important to make sure it is clean and dry.

For years we used a long-acting dry cow tube in conjunction with a teat seal on all cows. Two seasons ago, we changed to a policy of using the “antibiotic + seal” procedure only on cows above a certain SCC threshold.

That year, we had a cut-off point of 150,000 SCC at the last milk-recording before drying and no reading higher than that during the year. That meant that we had roughly half the cows in each treatment group, ie half treated with both dry cow tube and seal and half with seal only. The results were that we had no change – no cases of dry cow mastitis and no increase in SCC during the following lactation.

Last year we repeated the policy but changed the threshold figures to 200,000 cells/ml and ended up having only 20% of the cows in the “double treatment” category. The results were as before. No dry cow cases and the same profile of SCC through the year.

The only high SCC cows were the ones that were a problem the year before, and had been on the “antibiotic + seal” regime anyway!

To read the full AHI newsletter click here.