How does mastitis cause a "lost quarter"?

[rootsong]

Please pardon my ignorance! This is an off shoot from my other thread about our Jersey's mastitis. It was mentioned that our cow might lose that quarter and I find myself scratching my head over that.

Our Jersey has a 5 month old calf on her. We put the calf away at night and milk in the morning. The cow seems to have chronic mastitis in her right, rear quarter. She had a slightly positive CMT before we dried her up to have her calf, and then had another lightly positive about a month after calving. It has since become a more obvious positive and the milk is gloppy that comes out of that teat. We treated with ToDAY (4 treatments, 12 hours apart each) but there is no change.

The cow has no other symptoms at all. She never kicks at milking or has obvious outward signs of the infection. Just the gloppy milk that squirts out, and the pos. CMT.

My long winded post is just to ask: How exactly might she lose that quarter? Could the infection get worse and that quarter explode (being a little silly here) ? Or could it just never heal up and always have some level of mastitis in it? Or would we have to have it removed by a vet because we don't want to infect our other cows..?

How does a mastitis infected cow lose a quarter permanently?

Thank you for all your help!

[gone-a-milkin]

A bacterial infection inside the udder causes damage in there.
The body will try and 'wall off' the infections with scar tissue.
Enough scar tissue builds up in there and they cannot make any milk. Or if they do, you cannot extract it.
Sometimes they can even abcess and rupture out the wall of the udder.

I would really want to get this figured out, the sooner the better or worry
to risk her production.

Another thing to consider is that the calf could spread the infection to other quarters by mouth.

[Jennifer L.]

What Gone-A-Milking said.

There are all kinds of bacteria that can infect a cow's udder and some are mild and some are deadly. All of them are persistent due to the nature the udder so it's easy for mastitis to become chronic.

If the quarter is still soft after milking it out you have a good chance of beating it yet, but I would get your vet involved with different antibiotics other than those you can get at the feed store. Things like Today and Tomorrow are pretty much useless in my book.

If you don't want to go the vet route, the best thing you can do is keep the quarter milked out constantly, on the hour if possible. The constant flushing can help any case of mastitis. It's tiresome, thoughm and you may not have the time.

Good luck with her.

[willow_girl]

Some options: Get the milk from the bad quarter cultured to find out what pathogen you're dealing with. If it's antibiotic-resistant, it may come down to the cow eventually clearing the infection on her own ... or not.

If that's not feasible, you could just go ahead and try treating with a better antibiotic. I'd suggest Spectramast (you'll have to get it through a vet). Treat at every milking, and keeping treating until the infection clears or until you decide to give up on that quarter, whichever comes sooner.

Four treatments with Today really aren't enough to get the job done in most cases, even if it IS a pathogen that generally responds well to antibiotics! On the farm where I work, frankly we don't even bother using Today (or Tomorrow) any more ... it just isn't effective on the bugs we're dealing with.

I'd use Spectramast's dry-cow treatment at dry-off, too. I have seen chronic cows treated with it freshen in with no further problems ... sometimes ... but very often, chronic cases are just that ... chronic.

If the infection doesn't respond to any of the above, you could just quit milking that teat. Eventually it will dry up. Sometimes, as Gone-a-Milking indicated, an abscess will develop, and those are nasty and unsightly, but not necessarily fatal.

[Cheryl aka JM]

Well~ she's not a cow~ but according to my vet this very rarely happens to goats and while still rare is more likely to happen to cows.

My goats is sloughing off an infected udder half. It's really gross. I have pictures. I've thought about posting them~ but like I said it's really gross. She is a dairy goat~ most years I was getting 1/2 gallon off her milking once a day while sharing with her kid. This year I didn't need the milk~ so I grafted a second kid on her. Both kids were drinking and growing great. I was not milking~ I didn't know there was a problem. According to my vet~ this came on fast and I might not have known there was a problem anyway. This is what happened~
All seemed fine all the animals were happy and content. I left town for memorial day weekend. Saturday morning my friend who was caring for the animals called and asked about Peaches the goat not wanting to eat. I was a little worried and so was my friend~ so she took her to the vet. Better safe than sorry on a Holiday weekend, she rushed her in before the vet could close at noon. Vet milked out what looked like straight blood on the right side. Nothing at all was on the left side.

Was some Staph form of gangrenous mastitis. Almost never happens in goats~ rarely happens in cows. Of course MY goat got it. She nearly died. We sold the kids off her and started treating with masses of antibiotics in the udder and injections. She seems fine now~ except that half her udder looks like a dried up old catchers mitt and there is a line all the way around where you can see the goey seperation of dead and dying flesh is sloughing off. We are not milking the other side we are letting it dry up. According to the vet it's gonna get a lot grosser when it goes ahead and falls off~ next year she will be a One Teated goat.

[willow_girl]

So sorry about your doe, Cheryl!

I have seen (literally) thousands of dairy cows over the years, but have only seen one case of gangrenous mastitis, and that was about 10 years ago in the first herd I milked.

Sadly the farmer kept her until she recovered, then sold her for slaughter. RIP, Big Mama.

[Cheryl aka JM]

Peaches gets to stay. We joke that if we ever move back to town we would just have to tell people she's a funny looking dog