Dairy diagnostics 101

Abstract

This paper will discuss the ever-changing world of diagnostics in dairy veterinary practice and point out a few things that vet­erinarians should know concerning test selection and test type. It will be focused primarily on diagnostics for herd-level prob­lems of dairy cattle and will touch on mastitis, abortion and BVD. In addition, some time will be allocated to a brief over­view on PCR and advances in culturing. The remaining content of this paper will focus on diagnostic sampling strategies for common dairy herd problems, some disease investigation, rou­tine sampling and interpretation of results.