Day 113 - 03 Apr 95 - Page 14
1
2 Q. Can I just ask one question?
3 A. Certainly.
4
5 Q. If a number of cows have mastitis in a herd, is it usually
6 just the individual cow treated or is the whole herd
7 treated with antibiotics?
8 A. In general, with mastitis, one treats each quarter --
9 what one does is to have a tube which one pushes up the
10 udder and pushes, squirts, the antibiotic inside.
11
12 Q. So for mastitis that would be an individual treatment?
13 A. Yes. There are different causes for mastitis. We are
14 just coming out of the winter period, and I was going to
15 come on to this. During the winter the cows are housed and
16 many of them are kept in inadequate cubicles because the
17 size of the cows has increased since the cubicles were
18 built. This means that for various reasons cows are
19 susceptible to bacterial disease because their udders are
20 lying in concrete allowing them contact with faeces and so
21 on. They are not comfortable.
22
23 Q. When you say "many", what kind of proportion of cows would
24 be in these inadequate cubicles?
25 A. During this time most of the dairy beef animals in this
26 country will be kept in. In countries like New Zealand
27 ------
28
29 Q. Kept in inadequate cubicles?
30 A. Yes, in cubicles, many of them, I would say -- not all
31 of them -- are in this inadequate. Animal welfarists have
32 taken up on this point, particularly, that the cubicles
33 should be made larger. There should be more room for the
34 cows to lunge forward because the cow at this point is very
35 ungainly. She has an enormous udder, and so she is not
36 limbo like a natural cow would be. These diseases are
37 infectious, some of them. For instance, you get E.coli,
38 you get staphaureus, you get various streptococcus.
39
40 About this time of the year, the farmer is looking to get
41 these animals out on pasture as soon as the weather gets
42 better.
43
44 Q. This is the spring now or something like that?
45 A. Coming, yes. So, if I continued the tale, that the cow
46 now has -- our specimen cow, if you like -- has completed
47 another calving, she has given milk as well and, of course,
48 she will be put into calf again to go on -- it is
49 relentless -- until she starts to show signs of falling off
50 in production, reproductive disease, she will get a fatty
51 liver, cystic ovary, acetonemia, as I have mentioned --
52 that is ketosis actually -- mastitis.
53
54 The enormous strain on her udder means that it may have
55 dropped. The problem with this is sometimes it drops so
56 low that the calf cannot even suck from it. That means
57 again problems with the welfare of the calf, to make sure
58 that it gets enough milk.
59
60 It also means that the cow cannot walk properly. If you
