Evaluation of Two Treatment Protocols against Staphylococcus aureus at Drying-off

Abstract

A lot is known about control strategies to treat and prevent Staphylococcus aureus mastitis in dairy cattle. However, S. aureus continues to be one of the major causes of mastitis in dairy herds worldwide. The efficacy of current lactating cow antimicrobial therapy is clearly limited. Although intra-mammary dry cow therapy improves cure rate, the high proportion of treatment failures prevents this procedure from forming the basis for an effective control program. It has been suggested that extended lactational therapy prior to drying-off might improve cure rate. The goal of this study is to compare the efficacy of two treatment protocols, using either the combination of novobiocin and penicillin as a dry cow therapy (Novodry plus®), or the same treatment preceded by 3 complete treatments with Pirlimycin (Pirsue®), on bacteriological cure and reduction of somatic cell count (SCC) in cows infected with S. aureus.