Economic Evaluation of Antibiotic Therapy During the Treatment of Acute Coliform Mastitis

Abstract

Mastitis is the most costly disease of dairy cattle. Traditionally, most of the cost of mastitis has been attributed to production losses from subclinical cases. Because of this, economic evaluations of the cost of mastitis have focused mainly on contagious mastitis. 1 The relative importance of acute coliform mastitis has recently increased. Acute coliform mastitis appears to be the major mastitis loss on many well managed dairies with a low incidence of contagious mastitis.

The major impact of acute clinical coliform mastitis is production loss from udder and multiple organ system damage and deaths. Because of the sudden onset of severe clinical signs, most cases are generally treated aggressively and with great expense. Although a variety of drugs are used in the therapy of acute coliform mastitis, the economic impact and the efficacy of these treatments has received little research attention.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the economic impact of treating clinical cases of acute coliform mastitis with gentamicin or sodium ceftiofur and to examine the degree of therapeutic efficacy required for acute coliform mastitis to be treated economically.