Need Suggestion on Mastitis Health Care

[megapufferfish]

Greetings everyone

I'm a WWOOFer (volunteer for farm job) from Taiwan

My present host do biodynamic farming at Hokkaidou, Japan.

We have few jersey cattle as dairy cow.

At April 12th, 1 of them born a baby.

We had milked her for only 2 days after that,

and we found the milk was yellow and the cow was weak

So, we stopped milking and try to treat her with homeopathy,

separated the calf and give her commercial calf milk.

The cow getting healthy and behavior normal.

In this period of time, we didn't milk her at all, neither the calf drink her milk.

One day, we found that one quarter of her udder is hard like rock,

pink colored pus-like secretion went form the teat when we tried to milk her.

So we know we made mistakes.


The hostess is a Japanese and her husband is an American

The hostess phoned veterinary (Japanese).

The veterinary suggest that it might be environmental mastitis which infected by E-coli,

and the quarter might start to fibrosis inside and we'll lose this quarter.

It's fine for us, what we want is that she be healthy and happy

But there was a problem we are arguing - Should the secretions be milk out from her or just don't touch it?

In veterinary's opinion, it's both okay,

but the hostess think it's helpful liquid and purring it out will make she worse,

while her husband think it make she uncomfortable and he can't do nothing.


I was a graduated student in a microorganism laboratory, so I suggested that I can do a germ culturing test.

I did it with medium made by potato and sterilized my equipment in pressure cooker.

I cultured 3 sets of sample : the secretion from the cow, the city water, and a control set that only contain medium.

As the result, the E-coli colonies become visible after 8 hrs culturing from secretion while other groups shows nothing.

In my experience, E-coli colonies used to take 24hrs to be visible in laboratory,

so I concluded that the density of E-coli in the secretion is terribly huge, and this shouldn't stay in her body.


So, we continue removing the secretion form her once everyday for few weeks.

And the other 3 quarters are left for the calf, the calf is free to drink them but we've never milk them.


Now, we found that the quarter is getting bigger and bigger, big enough that the skin cracked.

We pull out about 1 cup of secretion and she seems make 3 cups after that.

The hostess again suggest we to stop removing the secretion, and her husband is still confusing.

He want to know exactly what happened inside her udder and refuse do nothing.


I've searched about this on internet for the therapy,

but most of the articles focus on the prevention and early stage therapy.

We are already late and accepted to give up this quarter of milk,

But we want her be healthy and like to know how to support care her at this situation,

want to find out the answer that what is better for her -

keeping pull the secretion out (or maybe we should do this more frequently?) or just do nothing and let she cure herself?


I'll be appreciate if anyone can give some opinion, thank you very much.

 

[Nite Hawk]

If this cow has e-coli mastitis she it can spread to the other quarters of her udder, and
if the infection leaves her udder and goes into her body it will possibly kill her.
She needs help and antibiotics from the vetrinary. Her udder needs to be completely milked out,leaving the sick quarter last so the infection is not carried on your hands to the healthy quarters. Make sure the bad milk is disposed of where nothing can get it. You can get antibiotics from the vetrinarian. In Canada we have an antibiotic infusion that is squirted up inside the infected quarter, twice a day after milking both morning and night and if she is real sick she should get a antibiotic needle in the muscle. Your vetrinarian in Japan can advise you as what medicine are available in your country for the problem..

 

[snake67]

Ladies and gentlemen

What you see above is someone who is most likely not coming back.

Homeopathy??

I shake my head.

No wonder the animal rights folks get pizzed off at farmers - these folks are pretty poor excuse in my mind

I wonder why people like this are even allowed to own animals.

Bez

 

[regolith]

megapufferfish: I think your vet may be saying it doesn't matter either way because you've already lost this cow.
The chances of her pulling through an infection like this with three sound quarters and in good health are very low. The infected quarter is already dead inside and no antibiotic will reach where it needs to get to.

It's part of your hosts' responsibility to the cattle that if they are SICK and NOT RESPONDING to holistic/organic treatments you MUST use the accepted, conventional treatments (aka antibiotics).
Then your cow will probably need to be removed from the farm because she is no longer organic.

For future reference - because in all likelihood it's too late for this cow - if you have another case of mastitis, take a clean milk sample into a sterile container and freeze it, before you start treating her. Then, or at any time later if she doesn't respond to treatment, the original sample can be cultured. Any treatment method needs to include frequent stripping of the milk - at least 2x daily.
The milk in the affected quarter is full of bacteria. Removing the milk removes the food source for the bacteria and reduces the multiplication. This helps the cow's immune system and any antibiotics you use to overcome the infection.
Around 40% of mastitis cases will self-cure and research I'm aware of shows that non-chemical treatments have a similar cure rate. Appropriate antibiotics - infused through the teat, injected into the muscle or both (severe mastitis may require both) - used early enough will greatly increase the chances of a cure. Anti-inflammatory drugs can also be helpful, and I think some of these can be used in organic systems.
I would advise you to delay no longer than 24 hours after start of treatment before turning to conventional treatment if those first 24 hours show no significant improvement. Time *is* important.
Your vet will advise you what treatments are most likely to be effective.

 

[megapufferfish]

Thank you all for the suggestion

Me and my host learns a lot by this experience.

The hostess contacted the vet again and explained more detail.

Vet said she is fine beside loss this quarter and just need time to cure the inflammation by herself.

Thanks again, to everyone.