Effects of health and welfare planning on the use of antibiotics and udder health in European dairy farms

To improve the sustainability of dairy production it is essential to establish practices that reduce medicine use whilst safeguarding or improving herd health and productivity. Aiming at minimising medicine use through animal health and welfare planning (AHWP), 111 farms in 6 countries were monitored as part of the wider Core Organic ANIPLAN project. For this purpose, the number of udder treatments with antibiotics was recorded. Somatic cell score (SCS) served as an indicator of udder health, and milk yield and average lactation number were calculated at the farm level from milk recording data. Treatment and milk recording data were collected for a one year period before and after a first farm visit. AHWP was carried out either in stable schools or using one-to-one-advice. General linear models for repeated measures revealed a decrease in udder treatments with antibiotics over all farms (P=0.004). SCS improved significantly over all farms (P=0.025), whilst milk yield and average lactation number remained unchanged (P>0.05). Choosing 'udder health' as AHWP focus area (58% of the farmers) did not further improve the parameters investigated. The implementation of an AHWP process can be regarded as a feasible approach to improve udder health and minimise medicine use without impairment of productivity.