Which preventive measures against mastitis can increase the technical efficiency of dairy farms?

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to explore if, and in that case how, various preventive measures against mastitis influenced the whole-farm economic outcome, measured as technical efficiency, of a sample of specialised dairy farms in Sweden. In particular, the paper aimed at analysing whether a change to preventive measures applied by fully efficient farms would be a way for inefficient farms to become fully efficient. First, technical efficiency was assessed for each farm in the sample based on farm-level accounting data and the data envelopment analysis. In a second step, the effects of preventive measures against mastitis (collected through a mail questionnaire) on technical efficiency were assessed with logistic regression. Keeping cows in a loose-housing barn, stimulating udders manually during milking, and having cows standing on clean bedding during milking were found to significantly increase the probability of a farm being fully efficient. Once the farmer considers the somatic cell count (SCC) to be too high, undertaking measures such as contacting a veterinarian, checking overall hygiene routines, and culling cows with high SCC were found to significantly increase the probability of a farm being fully efficient. Thus, these measures may be plausible targets for advisory services aimed at assisting farmers to become fully efficient, especially if they are confirmed in future studies. Several common preventive measures against mastitis, that is, choice of bedding material, frequency of cleaning stalls, pre-milking, post-milking teat disinfection, applying a milking order based on the SCC of cows, and milking high-SCC cows with a separate cluster, were found to have no statistically significant effect on farm economic outcome. However, these measures may still be valuable for non-economic goals, such as increased animal welfare, and the results imply that they can be implemented without negative impact on the economic performance of the farm.

Effect of pre‐milking teat disinfection on clinical mastitis incidence in a dairy herd in Northern Queensland, Australia

“…Our finding that PMTD was not a cost‐effective practice is consistent with the two largest studies conducted to date . Our failure to find a significant benefit is also consistent with the findings from cross‐sectional studies of PMTD, most of which show either a positive association or no association between the practice and clinical or subclinical mastitis …”

“…18,20 Our failure to find a significant benefit is also consistent with the findings from crosssectional studies of PMTD, most of which show either a positive association or no association between the practice and clinical or subclinical mastitis. [27][28][29] This herd met many of the criteria for a herd that should benefit from PMTD. Firstly, udder contamination was common.…”

Improving efficiency assessments using additive data envelopment analysis models: an application to contrasting dairy farming systems

“…The third limitation of dairy farm DEA studies is that they have often used survey data based on voluntary participation of farmers (e.g. Barnes et al 2011, Hansson et al 2011, Iribarren et al 2011, Kelly et al 2012, Shortall and Barnes 2013. This raises the question whether these data are truly random and representative (Jack 2009).…”

The Use of the General Animal-Based Measures Codified Terms in the Scientific Literature on Farm Animal Welfare

“…Indeed the literature on dairy cattle deals with the development of assessment protocols in small-scale mountain farms (21,22), pasture-based systems (23,24), or specific problems in indoor farms, e.g., lameness, mastitis, etc. (25)(26)(27). The second most represented group of species is poultry.…”