Abstract:
Mastitis is one of the most important and expensive disease of dairy industry resulted in severe
economic losses from reduced milk production, treatment cost, increased labour, milk withheld
following treatment and premature culling. Prevention and Control of bovine mastitis are thus
essential for the production of high quality milk. An experimental trial was conducted in Holeta
research center dairy farm from June to December 2011 to assess the effect of KENO™PURE
and KENOSTART™ teat disinfectants on reducing the incidence of mastitis, improving teat-skin
and teat-end conditions and to estimate and compare the direct financial loss due to clinical
mastitis cases between treatment and control groups using randomized controlled trial method.
The incidence of subclinical mastitis was diagnosed by using California mastitis test. Out of a
total of 38 lactating dairy cows that were randomly allocated into treatment and control
groups;19 cows were dipped with KENO™PURE solution and KENOSTART™ teat dip before
and after milking respectively whereas the rest 19 cows were left untreated. Teat end and teat skin
condition of each study cows were scored every 20 days. The direct financial loss due to treatment
of clinical mastitis cases in treated and control groups was computed. Accordingly, a greater
number of new intramammary infections were found in the control group than in the treatment
group. One hundred fourteen (22%) quarters in the control group and 42 (8%) quarters in the
treatment group were positive for new intramammary infection (χ
2 = 41.592, P <0.05). The
incidence rate at cow level shows a significant variation (P <0.05, χ2 = 31.222) between treated
23(17.3%) and control 65 (49.6%) groups respectively. The incidence of clinical mastitis
occurred at quarter level in dipped cows was 2 (0.4%) as compared to non-dipped ones which
was 7 (1.4%), (χ
2 = 2.875, p> 0.05).The treatment groups had a significantly more smooth teat
skin and smooth sphincter teat ends condition than the control group (P<0.05). The financial loss
of treatment of clinical mastitis in dipped cows was minimal as compared to non-dipped group. In
conclusion, the application of pre and post teat disinfectants has significantly decreased the
incidence of subclinical mastitis and has improved the teat skin as well as the teat end condition
and reduced the direct financial loss due to treatment of clinical mastitis. Hence, teat dips have to
be introduced in to the dairy farms as part of the mastitis prevention and control programs.
