Sanitation and control of infectious mastitis in a dairy farm located east of Gran Canaria

Abstract

Mastitis in cattle represents the disease with the greatest economic impact on farms. If prevention and control strategies are not used to reduce its prevalence and severity, the theoretical cost-effectiveness of these would be undermined. Good management and hygiene practices during milking, animal comfort and hygiene on the farm, guided therapeutic management according to the agent involved, and the early detection and culling of chronic cases are the most important measures for its control, because due to the ubiquity of the agents involved it is impossible to eradicate the disease from the farms. A widespread problem is the increase in antimicrobial resistance, which also has a detrimental effect on public health. This has led researchers in the sector to look for alternative solutions to the use of antimicrobials, such as the use of auto-vaccines to combat the main etiological agents involved in mastitis in a specific farm, as it is very difficult to obtain a universal commercial vaccine that can deal with various microorganisms. For this reason, the objective of this study was based on isolating and identifying the mastitis-producing agents in a farm, knowing the antimicrobial sensitivity and resistance of the isolates, developing an autovaccine to help control them, and finally, recognizing and correcting the critical points of the vaccine, in order to achieve a better control of mastitis in the farm under study.