The dry period is an important resting period for the dairy cow, as it is when fresh udder tissue is formed in readiness for lactation, and it provides an important opportunity to rid the udder of many pathogens that can potentially cause mastitis. The greatest number of new cases of mastitis occur in the first four weeks of lactation, and 60% of clinical cases originate from infections that have become established during the dry period (Green et al., 2002). Combinations of cow characteristics, farm facilities, and herd management strategies are associated with cases of clinical mastitis during lactation (Green et al., 2007).
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Dry off registration in Horizon
In Lely Horizon, cows are automatically added to the dry off task based on standard settings or your own settings. This enables you to focus on the cows that need attention regarding dry off. Horizon not only provides this advice based on days in lactation, but also based on milk yield and failures.
To make sure that no antibiotics end up in the milk tank after dry off, treatment plans can be added and applied within Lely Horizon, e.g. automatic tasks for the Astronaut are generated such as milk separation or a hot rinse after milking a treated cow.
Dry off Analysis page
Recently, Lely developed ‘Dry Off Treatment Analysis’ to analyse the effect of dry off treatments over time. The result that this tool shows can be used to optimise and fine-tune dry off treatment in the future. In addition, it can confirm that a treatment is effective.
The usage of different kind of dry off treatments are shown per month in the dry off treatments bar chart. The usage of previous year and the months of the current year until now are shown.
Example Horizon
In the ‘Dry Off Effectiveness last 365 days’ table, you can see the different kinds of treatment that have been administered for cows that have been dried off.
Example Horizon
In conclusion
The dry period is an important resting period for the dairy cow, as it is when fresh udder tissue is formed in readiness for lactation, and it provides an important opportunity to rid the udder of many pathogens that can potentially cause mastitis. Lely Dry Off Analysis helps you as a farmer to evaluate your dry off and improve this important transition for the cow.
Green, M. J., Bradley, A. J., Medley, G. F., & Browne, W. J. (2007). Cow, farm, and management factors during the dry period that determine the rate of clinical mastitis after calving. Journal of Dairy Science, 90(8), 3764–3776. https://doi.org/10.3168/JDS.2007-0107/ATTACHMENT/68788257-99EB-48A8-8A60-54D9A2E4ADA4/MMC1.PDF
Green, M. J., Green, L. E., Medley, G. F., Schukken, Y. H., & Bradley, A. J. (2002). Influence of dry period bacterial intramammary infection on clinical mastitis in dairy cows. Journal of Dairy Science, 85(10), 2589–2599. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(02)74343-9
