Vaccination Strategies for Mastitis

Prevention of exposure is the foundation of infectious disease control programs, including mastitis. The tenets of mastitis prevention are maintaining cows in a clean, dry, comfortable environment and ensuring that recommended milking practices are consistently followed. Under the proper circumstances, vaccination can augment a herd mastitis control program. However, vaccination is essentially an insurance policy to mitigate losses. Thus, veterinarians who counsel dairy producers on mastitis vaccination programs should be able to assess the need, evaluate the available vaccines that could help resolve the problem, and establish a program that balances applied immunology with logistical reality of the dairy operation.