Tracking system aims to improve dairy cattle mastitis resistance

Saturday, February 23, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

By December, Canadian dairy farmers will be able to select sires that can produce milking cows more resistant to mastitis.

That’s because the Canadian Dairy Network has received up to $54,000 from the federal government to develop a specialized software program to track mastitis in dairy cattle. Mastitis is a mammary gland infection that results in poor milk quality and is costly to the dairy industry.

Network general manager Brian Van Doormaal says this is the most recent portion of long term work the dairy industry has been doing for the past decade. Since 2007, about 40 per cent of Canadian dairy farmers have been voluntarily providing information about the incidents of mastitis and seven other diseases in their herds, such as milk fever and ketosis. The reporting is done through milk recording agencies, such as CanWest DHI.

The eight diseases are ones that affect farmers’ profitability and “are costly on dairy farms,” he says, noting there are more incidences of mastitis than some of the other diseases. The diseases relate to some kind of energy imbalance in the animal. Good management can control them but  there is a genetic component.

Building the mechanism to collect the data was the first part of the project, while the second part was determining the feasibility of calculating genetic evaluations for some of the disease traits. That portion has been completed and the network determined it is feasible to use the collected data on disease incidents on farms for genetic evaluations.

The third part, which the network just received funding for, is a one-year project to do technology transfer, Van Doormaal says. “It basically moves it from a research mode to allowing Canadian Dairy Network to introduce a new service of genetic evaluations for mastitis resistance for all dairy cattle breeds in Canada.”

The goal is to implement a national genetic evaluation system for mastitis resistance, he says. “To implement that we need to do the computer programming to build the system here at CDN and that’s what this money is for,” he explains.

The network already publishes genetic evaluations for many different traits, such as milk yield, fat percentage, fertility and longevity. “As of December we will be adding mastitis resistance to the long list of traits for which we offer genetic evaluations,” he says.

Both sires and cows are being evaluated for mastitis resistance, he says. “But the strength of the system is identifying which sires have daughters that are more resistant and therefore if you utilize those sires in your herd you’re going to be producing a herd of cattle that are more resistant to mastitis.”

Money for the project comes from the federal government’s $50 million Agricultural Innovation program, which is part of the Economic Action Plan 2011. BF