Learning to Clean

Instead of watching TV last night or fooling around on the internet, I read "Less Mastitis, Better Milk."  Christina has mastitis again.  When we were milking yesterday one quarter just stopped milking and then some goo came out.  We pulled out a clot and were able to finish milking, but I ran for the CMT test.  Sure enough, it was a strong positive.  We treated the quarter and we now we go through the pain of dumping milk for four days.

I figured it's time to really learn about mastitis and how to prevent it.  Many of the things I learned comforted me.  Christina's mastitis rate, always without symptoms until now, isn't bad.  This case is "mild clinical" since she only has clots but no udder inflammation (whew!  mild sounds good, doesn't it?).  Many of the risk factors we've mitigated.  But, we have some work to do.

We have to keep Christina cleaner.  In the winter, the cows just live in the shed, which means lots of ick.  We've been cleaning once a day, but it's time to clean more often.  We added more straw to their bedding and tested it by kneeling to make sure nothing soaked through.

The book said that dirty legs can cause mastitis.  Yep, she has dirty legs.  We cleaned really well around the feeder and will add sand so her feet stay cleaner, but to get a jump start we washed her lower legs.  She didn't seem to mind, but it must have been creepy because she padded her feet the whole time.  The manure had dried in many places but I was able to soak much of it off. 

As a final precaution, we boiled all the rags we use to wash her udder.  They probably should be boiled periodically, but this moved up the schedule.  After a regular washing, they got a solid 15 minute boil and then hung on the line in the sunshine.  Before all the chemicals we use today, people had great success using boiling as a means of sterilization.  That should obliterate any harboring nasties.

While we're figuring out this mastitis, we're also watching for heat.  We want to breed her at the end of the month, so we're watching for heat now to find her cycle.  Beefy's been with her for almost three weeks, but no dancing yet.  Today she was walking around alone.  When she's in heat, beefy's all over her.  It's not today.