Post by thystledown on Oct 11, 2018 9:54:01 GMT -5
I've been treating mastitis for 20 days. Recap: Heiferlump was dry for 15 months. She has strep in front left quarter. Fresh on 9/19 with mastitis on 9/20. Has been treated twice with Today then 8 days with Spectramast LC. Vet says they are seeing record numbers of mastitis this year that they blame on the hot wet weather. (Heiferlump was on clean good pasture). Anyway, no flakes or clumps, but I still have clear yellowish liquid instead of milk. Vet says continue to massage with absorbine or uddermint; force salt (she's getting as much salt in her feed as I can get her to eat) to get her to drink more to help flush her system, and I can try Pursue which is another class of antibiotics. I asked her if I should test again and she says no. She says I may have killed the strep but the udder will need a long time to heal. How do I know? She says I can't know. Just have to guess and decide on a course of action. This is a very odd case. No heat, no redness, and no teat injury--even from milking since she had mastitis the day after freshening. HOWEVER, I found a BIG thick scab in the very front of the cleft in her udder--walnut sized. I finally got it to come loose a few days ago with udder balm. I wonder if she ran a stick up into it and so what I have is an infection from trauma up in the udder rather than from the teat. I'm only milking once a day but hiking out to the pasture to strip the left front every evening. I can't even feed the milk to the other animals. It goes on the ground. I really want some milk and cream. I could choose not to do more antibiotics and then milk three quarters and hand milk/strip the affected quarter and see what happens. Or I can just do this next class of antibiotics. Again, I get very little milk out of the affected quarter. No clumps or thickness. Just an almost clear yellow liquid and only a few squirts at that. Even after massaging. Calf is still on her except when I treat when he is tied up for 4-6 hours to let the antibiotic get absorbed rather than sucked back out. So what would you do?