Preventing Contagious Mastitis Starts with Personnel Training

Apr 28, 2022

By Adrian A Barragan

Parlor personnel have a critical role in preventing mastitis in dairy cows. Our personnel are not only responsible for properly milking cows but are also responsible for detecting mastitis as early as possible to provide prompt and accurate treatment to mastitic cows. When training farm personnel, the first aspect that must be considered is communication. Around 50% of the farm personnel working in dairy operations in the U.S. are foreign born, and Spanish is the native language for 81% of them. One of the most common problems faced by dairy farmers that have Spanish-speaking employees is the language barrier. There are different ways that farmers can address this issue such as hiring a translator or relying on a bilingual employee. At Penn State Extension, extensive work is being done to increase our Spanish education portfolio and provide more resources in Spanish language for dairy farmers and their employees. However, often the language is not the only reason for lack of communication. In an on-going study, we found that regardless of the employee nationality or language, the number one improvement in the farm human resource management mentioned by participants was improving communication with their managers.

To ensure that the training information is conveyed properly, we must use the training methods that work better for the farm employee audience. It has been reported that only 60% of the dairy operations in the U.S. provide training to their personnel. Out of this 60%, 41% of the farmers provided oral presentation trainings, while only 12% provide training using interactive teaching methods, such as educational videos. Although any type of training (e.g., on-the-job, lecture, or a combination of both) would be beneficial, a combination of oral presentations and hands-on demonstrations have been shown to significantly increase the knowledge and skills of farm employees. In one of our studies, we found that employees that were trained using both oral presentations and hands-on demonstrations had a 23.7% gain in knowledge. Furthermore, using visual aids such as videos or photos is a great way to increase understanding and communication of job practices.

To prevent mastitis, personnel need to be trained not only about how to perform pen and milking practices but also about the "whys" behind these practices. By doing this, personnel will be able to understand the reasons behind these practices and the consequences of not following protocols. Contagious mastitis is transmitted from quarter to quarter or from cow to cow by an external factor such as the milker's hands. Therefore, milking practices related to diagnosing and milking mastitic cows are critical to prevent mastitis. Teat stripping is critical to accurately identify mastitis and prevent contagious mastitis from being transmitted to other quarters or cows. Often, this practice is done too fast and without looking at the milk being stripped. When training personnel, it must be emphasized that each teat must be stripped at least 3 to 4 times to not only provide good milk-let down stimulation but also to ensure that there is enough milk on the ground to assess conformational changes in that milk in order to accurately diagnose mastitis.

Another important area to train milking personnel is how to manage cows that were diagnosed with mastitis. A practice that may be very common in modern dairy farming but is worth mentioning, is that employees must always wear gloves while milking cows. One of the main reasons for this, on top of employee's safety, is that the smooth surface of gloves allows for a faster and better cleaning of the gloved hands after diagnosing mastitic quarter. Employees must understand that after they have touched a mastitis quarter, they cannot touch any other quarter until they wash their hands thoroughly. Ideally, employees must clean their hands, first with water and then with the pre-dipping solution. In farms with high contagious mastitis incidence and employee training issues, it may be recommended to train milking personnel to change gloves rather than washing after finding a quarter with mastitis. This is a simple and easy-to-understand communication practice that could be implemented in the short term.

Employees must be trained on other practices such as how to milk mastitis quarters, proper communication of mastitis cases to their manager, and where to move those cows after milking. Regardless of the practices implemented, protocols should be simple, easy-to-understand and accessible (including being translated to the language that best fits your employees).

Source : psu.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”