Elements of Mastitis Control

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Abstract
Mastitis is the most costly disease in dairy herds when adequate control procedures are not used. A single quarter infected for one lactation may reduce milk production of that cow 10 to 12% in that lactation (25). Additional costs of discarded milk, antibiotics, and culling increase the cost in an average herd to the dollar equivalent of approximately 700 kg of milk per cow per year (23). A nationwide survey of researchers in 1976 suggested annual losses in the United States of approximately 1.3 billion dollars (1). An exact estimate is difficult because data are unavailable to indicate the actual degree of infection in our dairy herds. However, any of the estimates on cost of the disease illustrate the need for continued work in controlling mastitis. In the previous jubilee issue, mastitis was covered as a section under "other diseases" and the author, Pounden, devoted approximately one page to the subject to summarize the state of the art at that time (36). Major advances had been in identification of organisms through bacteriological procedures. The etiology of Streptococcus agalactiae was fairly well under- stood, and the new wonder drug, penicillin, was effective in eliminating the organism from herds. While improved sanitation and milking practices were being encouraged, control was being left to the use of antibiotics. Most rec- ommendations on proper control procedures were based on observations, leading to a wide discrepancy in suggested approaches. A more complete summary of the disease, published in the same volume of the Journal of Dairy Science, was entitled "Mastitis - The Struggle for Understanding" by James Murphy (21). He suggested that mastitis was the most costly dairy cattle disease, and although research had been conducted, sharp differences remained in interpretation of results. Therefore, Murphy outlined a series of what he considered funda- mental points necessary for understanding the disease:

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