The perfect size of hospital pen is zero cows.
This is true in a perfect dairy system, where eliminating hospital pens could be possible.
However, what dairy farmers can generally aim at is bringing numbers of cows down in the hospital pen. It is a matter of revised overall management on farms.
Having a hospital pen on farms is not the rule, no matter what type of farm. It is just simply necessary in many cases. Nevertheless, along with pros, we do also have cons.
One side effect of hospital pens is that we need to move cows from the milking group, where they have their routine, to another new environment, thus changing their social hierarchy temporarily. And this means higher stress levels for them, plus more challenges for farmers trying to effectively cure animals.
Thus, dairy farmers generally put major effort to minimize the need of moving cows in the hospital pen.
In dairy, mastitis is the disease remarkably affecting animal health, milk production, farmers’ profit, and overall animal health. Hospital pens facilitate treatment of cows with mastitis.
Should we move cows in the hospital pen, independently from the severity of the specific mastitis case?
We have not to. Roughly 85% of mild to moderate cases do not need antibiotic therapy, as justified by milk cultures. At this point, two are the possible outcomes: either self-cure or things getting worse.
In these circumstances, early detection can help farmers to early intervene. And early intervention can help minimize the number of cows in the hospital pen.
This is the perfect situation for the use of OZOLEA’s non-withdrawal, non-antibiotic, non-prescription animal device– OZOLEA-MAST. By intervening timely on early signs of tissue disorders generally appearing before a clinical case, like milk flakes or electrical conductivity changes, with OZOLEA-MAST farmers will be able to provide support and protection to the mammary tissue, allowing it to autonomously regenerate. One good, easy-to-use, harmless, effective solution to reduce the number of cows in the hospital pen and the stress they experience while moving them from pen to pen: treatment will occur right after milking, keeping cows in the milking group.
The benefits of autonomous regeneration are restored tissue integrity and functionality, so that the tissue is able again to produce milk and defend itself properly against infections.
OZOLEA-MAST puts nature against nature, and it is suitable both for organic and conventional dairy farming.
Get in contact with the OZOLEA team to give the product a try in your dairy herd!
