CAUSES OF BAD UDDERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3549, 28 March 1922, Page 10

CAUSES OF BAD UDDERS.

A veterinary surgeon, writing in the Farmer and Stockbreeder, saye : '“These who expect to find a single remedy for udder troubles will be disappointed, because there are such a number of causes. If the particular one can be ascertained, we are in a fair way of doing something for it, or, at least, know what to expect. There are quite a perplexing number of names for hard and swollen udders and quarters that either give no milk or contain matter which needs to be withdrawn or neutralised by direct contact inside, and which no. external applications will reach, nor medicines given by way of tlie mouth influence, except indirectly and to a very limited extent.. The caked bag is often assigned to chills, as when a cow lies down on frosted grass or wet land. A cowhouse is apt to be too warm where a. number of cows are kept, and the milkers may leave a wet teat, and thus invite chaps and chills. As information accumulates from the various animal bureaus, and the reports of research workers are sifted, it seems more a.nd more certain that the majority of bad udders are the result of micro-organisms gaining entrance in some way into the filk glands. Bad milkers have often been blamed; indifferent stripping, rough handling, and other forms of external violence no doubt account for some eases, but, after making due allowance for these, it is probable that a large majority of them are due to dirt organisms of the type that are always present, or else from specific infectious ones carried from cow to cow. Many cow keepers are disinclined to accept the theory of infection, because! if number one cow gets a garget, number two, three, and four do not follow consecutively, but number five may follow number one. This only goes to show that soma individuals are more susceptible than others, or that the accident of contact with a dirty cow gown or infected hand or bit of bedding carried on the boot, was deposited at number five, and lain down upon when such contact might have happened with any other of the intervening numbers. But I base my view of infection being the greatest cause upon the success following on injections into the udder, as compared with any topical applications or medical treatment in the way of drenches. ‘•Badly dried-off cows have kernels left in, which do no harm until the udder springs again at a subsequent calving; then it proves a focus of infection. Among .my many letters to-day is one in which a painstaking “nurse” has done everything in the way of external applications and gets milk intermittently, and dirty water between whiles, and he has a lump which does not go away.’ This “lump” gives out the infective material-as fast as he reduces the hard bag by fomentation and massage with soothing oily linaments. No dairy farmer is properly equipped who does not possess a milkfever syringe and tire knowledge of how fo use and how to keep it when ..not in use. For the sake of the inexperienced', then, let us say that the instrument being of rubber, more or less, is very susceptible to cold, and will get hard and useless if frosted. Its canal offers a. harbour for germs, and it will prove injurious if not absolutely clean when employed. It should be put away clean, and should not be again used until ’a suitable antiseptic has been passed through it. while the metal nozzle is kept in the selected fluid. This may very well be the medicament intended to go into the milk glands, as with that very successful remedy ehinosoi and glycerine. Some half-pint or more of a solution of one grain to the ounce of ehinosoi, and one ounce of glycerine to. fifteen of water, at the temperature of the body, may be safely vised in any case, and in quite the majority with the greatest benefit.

“Chinosol is a direct germicide and nonirritating, by the law of osmosis, attracts the fluid in the congested areas to mingle with itself in the canals of the glands and from thence to the outside when manipulated in. the act of ‘milking.’ Peroxide of hydrogen is another of (he remedies which have proved invaluable for infected uddeirs. It is diluted with various volumes of water, about one to seven being generally used, but one in five for severe infectious This combines with the matter in a garget case with _ great avidity, and changes its composition, in many cases a gas resulting which forces itself out of the teat. . “Permanganate of potash might be recommended. but the cowman will persistently use it much too strong, and it must not be mixed with glycerine, as the two are incompatible and decompose- each other. One grain to the ounce of water is ample. Whatever remedy is selected it should be well distributed "by -subsequent, manipulation always following the action of the calf, and’giving upward pushes. If the hands

are lubricated with camphorated oil, pain is allayed and a beneficent action continued afterwards Garget is accompanied bv high temperature, and cn aperient is called for. Experience of cow doctors long before the clmioai thermometer was known was in favour of bold doses of aloes, salts, and nitre, and we should not despise the old and proven remedic® because we adopt the new, but choose rather to be ‘the first by whom the new is tried: the last to lay the old aside.’ "