The quantification of the economical losses caused by Staphylococcus aureus in a large-scale Holstein-Friesian dairy cattle farm

Abstract

According to surveys carried out in Hungary and in countries with advanced cattlekeeping, in the dairy cattle sector mastitis causes the largest economic losses on herd level. In the last decades such udder bacteria have been spreading which are resistant to a lot of antibiotics, and nowadays in most of dairy cattle farms the Staphylococcus aureus is responsible for most of mastitis cases. The direct consequence of Staphylococcus aureus infection is that both the quality and the quantity of milk produced by the infected animals considerably deteriorates and as a result it is impossible to produce quality milk in long term in dairy farms with infected cows. In the article a model calculation was shown to quantify the losses resulting from mastitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus. The surveys were performed at an average, Hungarian large-scale Holstein-Friesian dairy farm in 2001, and the production factors of Staphylococcus aureus positive cows were compared with those of healthy ones (control group). For calculations the natural and economical data of the dairy farm were used. According to the result of the calculations Staphylococcus aureus infected cows annually produce 583 kg less milk on average than the healthy cows and the average SCC of their milk is over twice as high (exceeds the 400 SCC/ml) as in the case of the healthy ones. The annual loss caused by the 53 Staphylococcus aureus-positive cows in the examined farm is more than 5 million HUF! The yearly loss per infected cow comes up to almost 100 000 HUF. For 59% of this loss the reduced milk income is responsible, in 39% premature disposal can be blamed, while the easily demonstrated cost of medical treatment amounts to only 2% of the losses.