Drying off cows organically?

[TroutRiver]

How do you do it without running into mastitis problems? We have had bad luck with mastitis this year, especially in dry cows and cows that have just freshened (way above normal levels for a cow after freshening). We are trying hard to use organic/natural practices, but are considering using conventional dry cow infusions to prevent mastitis in our freshening cows if we can't find another way...

[sammyd]

we don't use anything at all.
Milk once a day for a bit then every other day then done.
no abnormal amounts of fresh cow mastitis, we get one once in a while but our cows are dry for longer periods than conventional cows.

[TroutRiver]

That's what we have been doing, and almost every cow that's freshened in the last 2 months has had really bad mastitis in 1 quarter.

[ufo_chris]

just curious...why are you drying off just freshened cows?
I mean a beef cow you leave the calf on and a dairy cow you'd milk ,so what am I missing?
Thanks

[gone-a-milkin]

The last big rash of fresh cows w/ mastitis here it turned out to be caused by a boughten heifer who was sucking the dry cows.

She has perdy brass jewelry now and the problem is solved.

[springvalley]

Most of the time if heifers come in with mastitis it is because they have been sucked on by another heifer. We bought some heifers one time and two of them had mastitis when they freshened, same quarter, so had to be from another one sucking. I also dry my cows off without treating them, once in a blue moon I will have one get mastitis, but not very often. I then treat with 1cc of Pen.-G along with 15cc sterile saline solution in that quarter and most times never more than twice. then milked out at least two or more times a day for four to five days. I also use a udder balm that I make, and rub that into the udder well after treating her. Most of the time when we get a cow with mastitis, it is because she has gotten bumped, or pushed by another cow, and those clear up quite quickly. Our cows have free run on pasture mostof the year and large bedded loafing shed in the winter, and they get by very well. > Thanks Marc

[TroutRiver]

Originally Posted by ufo_chris

just curious...why are you drying off just freshened cows?
I mean a beef cow you leave the calf on and a dairy cow you'd milk ,so what am I missing?
Thanks

Sorry, I was unclear. This is what we have been doing when we dry cows off, 2 months before they freshen. When they freshen, an alarming number of them have had mastitis.

So something is happening in between when we dry them off and when they freshen, that is creating mastitis.

[Jennifer L.]

My guess would be you have a higher powered bacteria in your herd right now. Their immunity isn't taking care of it once their udder isn't being flushed out twice a day by milking them. Up until now, their immune system was handling and taking care of the bacteria at dry off, so they had good udder health at freshening.

Has your vet cultured some of these quarters? I would do that if you haven't. Find out what you are dealing with and then decide if you need to step up to antibiotics or a certain kind of antibiotic for whatever you are dealing with.

Jennifer

[ufo_chris]

Originally Posted by TroutRiver

Sorry, I was unclear. This is what we have been doing when we dry cows off, 2 months before they freshen. When they freshen, an alarming number of them have had mastitis.

So something is happening in between when we dry them off and when they freshen, that is creating mastitis.

Thanks Trout!