F-Newbie Mastitis Doctoring Question

[nzthomas]

Hello milking friends,

I am new to this list and new to cow ownership. In fact, before July 5, when we bought our cow, I'd never even touched one before! I had, however, milked goats for several years, an experience which has come in handy with this Jersey cow.

Only a few days after getting the cow (from an Amish farmer who had only milked her for two weeks after having two calves on her this spring), I noticed little globs coming with the first few squirts of one teat, and the milk began taking longer to strain.

The vet confirmed (by my verbal description) that mastitis was in the works, so he sent us home with four 1x/day shots of Encenel (or a name similar to that--I never saw it written). Getting the shots into the cow was a dreadful, many tears experience. We tossed the milk during those days, but since the vet said we actually didn't have to, the next day (four days ago) we kept it again.

But then globs starting showing up the very next day. So three days ago I returned to the vet, telling him I'd give no more shots, and he sent me home with a four-day supply of Pirsue (pirlimycin hydrochloride) to shoot up her teat 1x/day, with a 36-hour milk dump afterwards, too. It's a dream to administer after the horrible shot experiences, but tonight (application #3) I noticed the neighboring front teat now has globs coming from it as well!

There is a Jersey dairy farmer around the corner from us. I talked to him this afternoon. He suggested I get Tomorrow (a teat infusion) and give penicillan. Should I? Should I put it in all four teats just to be sure? How many times? If this doesn't work, he suggested I give LA-200, which he said has a 96 hour milk dump afterwards! He said b/c the cow's udder and teats don't seem to be sore, and b/c the milk seems to have a yellowish cast, this may be chloroform mastitis (that's what it sounded like he was saying). He said it's very contagious and very hard to get rid of. Great!

We spent about all we have on this cow. We have eight children, and the reason we bought the cow was b/c we are using an alternative treatment to help our seven y.o. daughter with autism. This treatment involves giving her only raw cream and raw butter and no caseine (or gluten). We need to get this cow healthy so we can get our daughter healthy! (See bodyecologydiet for more info on that.)

I have other questions to ask y'all, too, but this is my emergency question for now. I'll put the others under other headings. Please send advice. Gratefully, Nancy in TN

link verified: 2-12-11

[Midgimoo]

Hi and welcome Nancy ;D Your username, nzthomas, are you a Kiwi?

I'm afraid to say that the state of your cow's udder doesn't sound How long ago did you buy her?
What a shame you didn't get in contact with the former owner when your cow first got crook.

My guess is that the cow does have the bad type of ongoing mastitis and this could be why the farmer had calves nursing her and only milked her for two weeks before selling her.

I understand that money comes into it, but I do think it's time for you to find out what form of mastitis it is she has.

I've not had to deal with mastitis so will let some of the other members give you further advice.

Feel free to post your other queries. We love heaps of posts as much as we love seeing pix of everyones cows

[Joann]

Welcome to the group. We will help you all we can. I am not well pleased with the farmer who sold you the cow. I would be inclined to have a word with him, explaining your situation, the importance to you of having a cow, and making clear that he should trade you a different cow. She does, however, sounds like a well tempered cow to put up with all this treatment.

Can you talk with your vet and tell him that you may have to delay payment for a bit, but it is vital that you get a lab test to identify the strain of mastitis that you are dealing with? The type considered incurable is Coliform. There is no reliable medication. However, to call it incurable is probably an exaggeration. It can be controlled by frequent milking., You just have to keep removing the milk. It will also help to rub down the udder with something that increases blood supply. I rub on lard followed by handfuls of cayenne. This does not burn. Look in the Tree of Knowledge section for other rub-on treatments.

All cases of mastitis are best treated by frequent milking. I know this cannot be done once you have injected meds. In future I suggest that your first response to mastitis be frequent milking combined with some type of liniment such as the lard/cayenne. application. By frequent milking I mean as many times a day as you can manage and keeping this up until the milk is clear. Mastitic milk is not harmful but may taste salty. When the milk again is free of lumps and strains freely the mastitis is under control. If is is chronic, as is likely to be the case with your cow, be sure never to miss a milking and always to strip thouroughly and monitor the filter at every milking.

I am sure others will add more advice to cover anything I have overlooked, and perhaps add further tretaments.

God bless your efforts, family and cow.

[Claire]

I think that the first antibiotic the vet had you use is the one that doesn't get into the mammary tissue, explaining why it didn't do anything!

How do her quarters feel- hot, hard, lumpy?

I would go with the Today teat infusions, they go directly to the source of the problem and for most types of mastitis are very effective- you will see an improvement in about 24 hours. The best routine with them is to milk out the cow in the evening, give the infusions, milk in the morning, infuse for the 2nd and final time, and then wait to milk until the evening because the antibiotics really need to sit in the udder for a good while. I believe there is a 4 day milk withhold after the final treatment. Treat all the quarters that have the blobs in the milk.

While it could be one of those perpetual coliform infection, it sounds more like mild mastitis that likes to travel through each quarter. Its a pain to deal with, but it clear up. You need to clean each teat well, and clean and milk the infected teats last so you aren't spreading the bacteria. Massage her quarters well and slather something on (cayanne/ lard or tea tree oil/aloe vera gel work well) to get the blood flowing and work the infection out. You can have the vet get a sample of the milk tested to see what type of bacteria is at work.

[nzthomas]

Thank you, folks, for your very prompt replies! It is now Saturday morning. I just came in from milking and those blobs are still there (just when I do the first few squeezes) and the affected teats seem thicker. There is no redness, heat, or swelling anywhere, although the front part of her udder seems less pliable (but then, I'm not sure if it's supposed to feel as pliable as the back part, since I never felt her 100% healthy before). We have out-of-town company arriving in a couple of hours. Would a milk sample delivered to the vet on Monday morning be worth anything when it's full of antibiotics? And should I bring a separate sample from each of the teats or just a blended jar's worth?

This is just like it happens with children; they get sick on the weekend! I'm sending my son to the Co-op this morning to buy 8 tubes of that Today/Tomorrow stuff (I've heard both names now) along with a thing of Procaine Penicillan G, which we use on our sheep sometimes. I'll also see if I can round up some lard/cayenne mixture. Could I use butter for starters? (We live 30 minutes from a grocery store.)

No, I'm not a kiwi. That'd be neat, though. I'm a Tennesee girl with a little living experience in L.A., Atlanta, and Nashville, now located for the past 8 years about an hour and a half south of Nashville, just above Alabama. Monday is my 46th b.day. My parents can't believe I'm milking a cow! Mama is 74, and just visited so as to say she'd milked a cow once in her life. But then, they can't believe that we have eight children (several with special needs-all biological) and homeschool and live in the country with chickens, sheep, lots of dogs and cats, and now, horrors, a milk cow!!!! I just wish we could start seeing some reward (safe milk) from all my labors on the cow. Will keep y'all posted. Thanks again for the advice. Send more if you think of it!

[wyomama]

Just wanted to mention that Today and Tomorrow are two different mastitis treatments. Today is for lactating cows, Tomorrow is a dry cow treatment.

Butter would work for the cayenne application - the point is to get the cayenne to stick on the udder. If you have Corona or some type of lanolin-based ointment, that would work, too. If you have a natural liniment that maybe has some peppermint oil in it, that would work also.

I'd add my vote to getting a culture done to identify the bug at work before you spend anymore money on antibiotics.

I've not dealt with coliform mastitis specifically, but have dealt with it in cows and myself, and in my experience, FREQUENT milk removal and circulation-enhancing treatments (heat, ointments, massage) work exceptionally well and quickly. I have always told myself that I would use my methods for 48 hours, and if no improvement, add antibiotics. Knock wood, I've not gotten to that point.

[sherry]

Nancy,
I live in Muscle Shoals, AL so I'm probably not but about 1.5 hours from you . Where exactly do you live? If you're not too far, I might be able to come up and take a look at your cow.

My very first Jersey had "staph" mastitis---not a good thing. The vet advised me to cull her as there was no cure for it and it would eventually pass to all other quarters. However, this might not be what you have. I would take a sample to the vet and let him culture it. It will take a few days before you get the results.

You will need to sterilize 4 small jars (I used little glass bouillon jars) and lids. Clean each teat end thoroughly with an antibacterial soap and rinse. Squirt a couple of squirts from each teat onto the ground and then milk some in each jar. Label your jars so that you will know what milk came from which quarter. You will want to know which quarter or quarters are involved. You don't need much milk, less than half a bouillon jar. Take this to the vet and he will do the rest.

[Deleted]

Many excellent points have been made. Trying to touch all bases and get every possible thing in the light of discussion...The thing I did not see in any of the posts was a referal to milking style.

Milkers must milk without any of the milk squishing back up into the udder. Milkers must try and milk out each teat and quarter completely. To overcome the mastitis one could milk out completely several times a day (2-5). That for me was about 350 squirts from each quarter*. I could not quit for any reason before my cow was empty. (*1000+ pull compressions from girl hands which turned into gorrilla strong girl hands but not without aches & pains which prevented my cow from ever getting mastitis.)

If you machine milk, hand strip anyway.

Another thing I did not see is if your cow is letting down for you after having been nursed by calves. She might be holding back milk. That dispite your efforts would result in being prone to mastitis.

Lastly some cows have very small milkduct openings in the end of the teat. This is either genetic or treatable by reaming. Both those are a bummer to deal with. Only calves do well on the former and reaming has risks.

[nzthomas]

Hi all,

I finally have a few minutes' time to "do" the computer. You've all been so generous and helpful with your responses. Thank you. I'm distressed to find out that Tomorrow and Today are for different seasons of a cow's life. My son insisted that the man at the Co-op told him we should use Tomorrow on this mastitis, and that that's all he was able to buy. Therefore, Sophie has now had two nights' worth of Tomorrow in her front teats, plus, by the hardest, we shot almost 10 cc of Procaine Penicillan into her muscle Saturday night. Sunday evening I did not see any globs with the first few squirts (the only time I've seen them), but this morning there were globs from one of the teats. I will see what I find this evening. If there's any evidence of globs, I'm going to get a milk sample from each teat as y'all suggested and deliver it tomorrow for testing. It would be worth the money to find out if we are indeed dealing with coliform mastitis. My husband and I prayed about getting A cow, and then THIS cow, and now we're praying FOR this cow. The sweet thing just HAS to get better!

Regarding frequent milkings: the ONLY way I can get Sophie to come to and through her pasture gate over to the milking stanchion shed is at milking time, when she knows there is grain in her bucket. To do more milkings than that, I'd have to tie her to the stanchion, which is a replica of the one in Joann's book stuck under a shed made of t-posts, cattle panels, and tarps. Is that what everyone else does during crises, or do your cows come when they're called any time of day or night? And do you put grain in their bucket every time during these mid-day and mid-night milkings?

Thanks for the tips! Nancy in TN

PS--Sherry in Muscle Shoals, AL: We are about halfway between Pulaski and Columbia, 20 minutes west of Exit #27 off I-65. There is a very helpful couple (John and Jeannie Cairns--Jersey cow, pastured beef and poultry, Weston Price Fdtn.) in Ardmore, TN, but they've never had to worry about mastitis and are very into complicated homeopathic treatments. Being already overwhelmed at present, I wilted at the thought of trying to understand all the homeopathic stuff. Maybe later.

[Claire]

Tomorrow is a long acting antibiotic and when used properly during the dry off must be given to a cow at least 28 days before she is due to freshen. I'm not sure how long it would stay in the udder with milk moving out because the cow is lactating, but I would try and call the company that makes Tomorrow (I think it is Fort Dodge) to see how long you have to wait to use the milk again.

My cow comes in at milking time and I can bribe her in with a dish of grain at off times or a bag of goodies like apple slices, zucchini chunks, or carrots.

[nzthomas]

I'll call the Tomorrow makers tomorrow about milk withdrawal time. It's going to be drying off time before we ever get to keep some milk at this rate! -- Nancy in TN

[nzthomas]

Hi all-- I am the new cow owner who used Tomorrow (Fort Dodge Animal Health) to treat mastitis in her wet cow. I do want to justify my stupidity just a little bit to say that the man who runs our local Co-op insisted this was the stuff to buy rather than the drug called Today. I mistakenly trusted him. (And today, when I told him what has happened, he said he thought we were wanting it for pink eye! My son, who bought the stuff for me, wouldn't have even KNOWN to mention pink eye. He just said mastitis, and if the Co-op owner had been listening when I visited before, he'd have remembered we had just gotten this cow with the intention of using her cream and butter to help our autistic daughter!

Now we've found out that the milk withdrawal time is a MINIMUM of 33 days!!!!! That means we will have had our cow almost nine weeks and been able to use only one week's worth of her milk, thanks to this plus the medicines we were using at first. And guess what? She STILL has globs in the first few squirts of her milk (from the front two teats). I'm starting to wonder if that's just how she is, and maybe she didn't even have mastitis from the start. She never seemed sick at all.

Anyway.....what's done is done. In case any of you ever want to know, the phone number for Fort Dodge Animal Health Company is 515-955-4600, Option 2. Ask for a vet. They said we could ask our home vet for a test after we've dumped milk for three weeks to see if the drug is out of her milk, but that's scary. Any animal infused with Tomorrow must not be slaughtered for food until 42 days after the latest infusion. That almost makes me think we should wait at least that long before we use the milk.

I feel so dumb. When my son brought Tomorrow home from the Co-op I asked right away, b/c the box says it's for dry cows. But my son said the Co-op man "insisted" this was what we needed, so I trusted him, thinking I didn't know enough.

How much butter do you think I'll be able to set aside in nine weeks or so before we have to dry up our cow?

--Nancy in TN

[DostThouHaveMilk]

Please refresh my memory. Is you cow pregnant, if so, when is she due?

I'll ask dad what he would do.
Shame on the guy for misleading you, though it does not appear he did so on purpose.

Keep in mind that with dry cows, it sits in the udder during their dry spell, and they are not milked out after they are treated until after they calve. So if you are milking her out regularly the medicine may (and I am not positive here) work itself out of the system more quickly than normal.

Have you spoken with your vet about this?

The clumps you mention, are you able to take pictures and post them on here? It may help. It is not very normal to find clumps in milk, it generally is a sign of mastitis, and the Tomorrow is to help prevent mastitis during the dry spell and not treat active mastitis, which is what Today is for.

[Claire]

If you are just getting clumps from the first few squirts of milk, and not in the rest of the milk, I wonder if she just makes really good plugs in her teats between milkings? Mastitis has clumps in the milk throughout the milking.

How about getting a bottle calf or two and feeding them all the milk- or fostering them on her- for the weeks you can't drink the milk?

I am so sorry, this must be so frustrating and dissapointing .

[myersfarm]

nzthomas...did you put the tomorrow in all 4 teats or just the front 2 in only front 2 then you can use the milk for the child from the back 2 because i am sure it doesn't go thought the udder wall...might call fort Dodge again to check and make sure before you use it though......if only for one child 2 teats of milk might be enough for a while anyway.......i check with my vet...and he said to use tomorrow on my cows because it was twice as strong as today but for me not to drink the milk just give it to my calfs...i do drink alot but i can get it from any cow i want for me to drink,,........john

[nzthomas]

Thanks for all the sympathy, y'all. Yes, our cow (5 y.o.) is due to calve the end of January, so we need to dry her up around Thanksgiving. With your thoughts that perhaps the Tomorrow may work itself out of her more quickly since I'm milking 2x/day, I am encouraged that maybe we definitely should test her milk after three weeks, in case it's out of her. The Fort Dodge people said we should not use the milk. I did tell them we'd only put Tomorrow up two teats, so they could've inferred that the other two would be "clean", but they didn't mention getting milk from them. I did not think to specifically ask that question, though. They were pretty emphatic that it would be BAD to get this medicine inside of people, especially children.

Good news--no more globs in the first squirts of milk for two milkings now. And she gave more, too. (The Tomorrow folks had said the production would drop a bit right after treatment, which it did. I'd assumed that was caused by mastitis, but maybe not.) If those globs appear again, and if they do not get any worse than they were, I'm just going to do the natural stuff I've learned off here and see if that does the trick.

There is one consolation for us: we live relatively close to an Amish community, so if I look around, I'm sure I can find raw butter for the next month or so. I just trusted my butter better! (Like Betty Botter--remember that little nursery rhyme about Betty Botter's Better Butter?!)

--Nancy in TN

[Vanessa]

I don't know if it is called tomorrow there (here it is called special formula)-but it is a mastitis infusion that works VERY well on pink eye. So I can see how the mistake can come about. Also-possibly she has chronic mastitis that can cause those little clumpies. Sometimes it can be underlying, and not cause fever or sickness, just clumpy milk. Do a mastitis test. Also-I have heard that there is a naturopathic treatment/prevention for mastitis from a lady in NZ. I am waiting for mine to arrive, I've just sent the M.O. Dolly is bad for chronic mastitis, as well as bad flare ups. Ask her for Mastitis Nosode, I believe it is called.
Anyways, good luck, and don't feel dumb. We are all in different stages of learning, and this forum is THE best for help!
Hugs!
Vanessa

[nzthomas]

Hi all! A full WEEK after taking milk samples to the vet to check if the Tomorrow mastitis treatment I mistakenly used on our wet cow (it's meant for dry cows, in case newbies newer than I didn't know!), we just received the news that Sophie's milk is FREE of the poison! You might remember that the makers of Tomorrow recommended a 33-day milk withdrawal, which would not be until this coming Monday. The day I took in the test milk was 3 weeks and 2 days (23 days) after my mistaken application of the wrong mastitis medication. So...hopefully no one else will be as dumb, but in case you are or know someone else who is, here's hope that your milk won't be polluted for the full 33 days either! I'm just bummed that it took an entire week to find out. Would that be b/c it takes that long to do the test or b/c we have an overwhelmed, disorganized vet whose specialty is NOT dairy cows?

Nancy in TN

[Claire]

Woo hoo!

The vet probably sent the milk to a lab. We had a fecal sample that went to a lab once and it took 3 days for results, but maybe your test was out of the ordinary.

I wonder why Fort Dodge said 33 days when the tube says it can't be used any later then 28 days before freshening?

[Deleted]

Milk from a commercial dairy is supposed to be free of Colostrum too. Perhaps if one adds 3 or 4 days to the 28 it puts folks out at 32 days.