Abstract :
[en] Udder health is usually considered as a health and economic problem for farmers. We now consider that mastitis is the result of many factors related to the environment, the pathogen and the host. What may have been forgotten in the process is the fact that nowadays, the main interface with mastitis is the farmer, and their knowledge about mastitis is very heterogeneous.
This reflexion has led to the creation of a technical and pedagogical pack called “Mammipack” which contains different tools, from all actors of the dairy chain. We included small charts explaining the most important risk factors identified through epidemiology, good dairy practices and its effect on milk flow, milking machine check-up, how-to for mastitis milk sample, a how-to for performance records use for udder health management, a resume on genetic selection of sires and mastitis, charts upon nutrition factors and their main effect on udder physiology during lactation and dry-off, resume on veterinary drugs good management in the farm. Small laminated sheets upon milk sampling for bacteriology and teats evaluation were also joined in order to be use in parlors, sterile sampling tubes were also given in the pack. A mastitis record pad was designed to record the main clinical forms and the treatment chosen. Eventually, the book Udder Health® was added to have a complete modern look on that problem in dairy farms.
25 farmers were selected on a voluntary base by 12 veterinarians, and they answered to questionnaires about their main practices regarding herd structure, mastitis treatment, and southern Belgium main 19 risk factors. They had to answer basic questions concerning udder health on 15 points. They agreed to keep a record of all next mastitis cases in their farms and take milk samples for bacteriology each time at day 0 and day 21 during 3 months.
The main objective is to show to a group of dairy farmers that mastitis could take several different forms from one farm to another, in term of incidence, pathogens and clinical forms. One other purpose is to show the difficulty to have bacteriological cure, even when physical cure has happened. After all, one collateral objective was to create the Mammipack®, designed for farmers and vets to increase their ability to collaborate on mastitis management through most dairy chain actors’ expertise.
