Selective Dry Cow is now the Default

Selective Dry Cow for your herd is now the default – Blanket Dry Cow (whole herd dry cow) will be the exception.

The rules we operate under have changed and it is now going to be much harder to authorize the use of antibiotic dry cow therapy (ABDCT) to a whole herd. We now must prescribe for each cow, not for a herd.

There is justifiable concern that the widespread use of antibiotics will lead to the selection of antibiotic resistance (this has been found overseas and some weak evidence of it in NZ). Perhaps a more tangible reason why we need to shift from blanket use of antibiotic dry cow therapy is that we have Free Trade Agreement with the EU that is based on “equivalence” – the use of antibiotics to prevent mastitis over the dry period is not permitted in many parts of the EU.

Many of you have already transitioned to using teat-sealants alone for uninfected cows and only using ABDCT for cows likely to be infected so this really won’t affect you, except we will be providing you with more paperwork to file to prove this is what are you doing.

For those of you who are thinking that you may still be able to use ABDCT on the whole herd, unless your BMSCC is averaging over 200,000 and rising from February, we will probably not be able to authorise blanket treatment.

We need good records to make the best decisions for each individual cow, this means we need to know a cow’s mastitis history, (please enter all mastitis events into MINDA), her herd test history, age and predicted production level at drying off. Nationally we know that 77.1% of cows in the national herd got herd tested in the 2023/24 season. What we are expected do for the herds that are not herd testing has not been fully addressed but the advice suggests using RMT to define a cow as infected or uninfected. If your herd is in a position where blanket ABDCT might be justifiable perhaps yours is a herd that would really benefit most from herd testing.

For those farms that are not used to using teat-sealants alone at dry off, please talk to us, and your farming mates who are doing it successfully, as it does take planning and meticulous attention to detail and hygiene, and you can’t just decide “lets dry off tomorrow” and expect a great result.

This change has been forecasted and is supported by DCANZ and DairyNZ. We will help you identify cows that will be suitable for not receiving an antibiotic at drying off and get a teat sealant alone. Between now and drying off start thinking about the logistics of drying off some cows without antibiotics.

• It does take longer

• You need to be meticulously clean

• Who will do it?

• Can you talk with your neighbors who have been doing it successfully and get some tips from them.

• Don’t plan on cutting corners, it will “bite you” eventually.

• If it seems like a short cut you won’t get away with it every time.