Contagious Bacteria Control C ontagious pathogen control has to focus on minimizing the number of cows infected, duration of infections and cow to cow transfer at milking by the units or milker's hands. Minimizing infected cows involves identifying such cows and then treating, segregating or culling them. The most accurate way of identifying which bacteria are causing infections is by milk culture procedures, performed on individual cow milk samples, by a qualified laboratory. S egregation of infected cows attempts to separate known contaminated cows from clean cows. By so doing clean cows are no longer exposed to possible contamination from infected cows.
T reating contagious infectious successfully depends primarily on the bacteria species involved.
Strep ag responds well to penicillin based treatment products. Staph aureus on the other hand is difficult to eliminate by treatment during lactation and in older animals it frequently becomes chronic. Mycoplasma species that cause mastitis also do not respond to antibiotic treatment and must be handled by segregation or elimination from the herd. C ow to cow spread of these organisms may occur at the time of milking. I n the big picture each of these issues has to be dealt with effectively on a daily basis and even minor departures from accepted norms or practices could result in problems developing unexpectedly.