Russell and Stuart both manage family farms milking about 450 cows in a rotary dairy without automatic cup removers.

In the couple of months leading up to and just after Christmas, both farms had seen a rise in Bulk Milk Cell Count (BMCC) and both had experienced an increased number of clinical cases of mastitis.

Interestingly, both Russell and Stuart had a suspicion that something about their milking process was influencing their risk of mastitis.

“I don’t know what it is, but something isn’t quite right!”

Tim* milks about 450 cows in a rotary dairy in North East Victoria, and it had been some years since we had worked on mastitis control with him.

“The cell count is still good, but we are now getting too many cases of clinical mastitis, and I reckon the teat ends don’t look as good as they were when you were last here.”

"We work really hard to get the cell count down, and then it just takes off on us, and we don't seem to be able to stop it."

The frustration was clearly obvious at a meeting with the farm team on this 300 cow farm.

"How can it spread so quickly?"

Recently, I was returning home from two farm visits at which I discovered that both farms had been dutifully replacing their rubber teat cup liners every twelve months, just as they had done for many years.

While I was contemplating liner change intervals in the car, I passed a car on the side of the road accompanied by a police car with lights flashing.

Because the traffic was slow, I observed the driver and the policeman having what appeared to be an animated discussion whilst pointing to what were obviously very bald tyres on the car.

Recently, I dropped one of the family cars into the service centre in the morning for what I expected to be a normal routine service.

It was a big surprise a couple of hours later to sit listening on one end of the phone as the mechanic ran through a list of items on the car that needed attention.

But my mood seriously worsened when he told me the total estimated cost!