Heifer Mastitis and Blind Quarters
I recently had a telephone conversation with a heifer grower. They raise heifers from about 400 pounds until two months before calving. They have several dairy clients that send heifers to them.
He had come in from treating a heifer for a swollen quarter. As that information was being added to the computer he was prompted to pull up the rest of the cases where similar treatments were made since the first of the year.
This showed that 23 cases had been treated. He checked to see the source farm for these cases. Twenty-one of the cases came from just one client. That is 90 percent of the cases even though that client's animals are only 40 percent of the animals on the facility.
He asked me about ideas I might have about why this might be the case. We concluded the most likely source of the problem was cross-sucking at the source farm. He was planning to stop by the farm toward the end of the month to go over this issue with the farm owner.
That got me started on building the September issue of Calving Ease, "Cross-Sucking: Issues and Tips." We are loading this on our web site on 9/6/13 so it should be available there.
www.atticacows.com - it should be front and center on the home page.
If you want to receive a note with a link each time the monthly issue of this calf management newsletter comes out just send an e-mail to calvingease@rochester.rr.com with subscribe in the subject field.
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