Vol. 20 No. 1 February 2000

The English homœopathic veterinarian Christopher Day has had a lot of experience with giving homœopathic remedies to herds of dairy cows with the intention of preventing and/or curing udder infections affecting the quality of milk.

He has reported his experience, admittedly with small herds (for example the 82-cow one and the 130-cow one illustrated in the tables which follow) but his strategies are sound and can be translated to large herds as several New Zealand farmers can attest. Day’s trial results are abstracted from the British Homœopathic Journal of January, 1986.

Study 1.
Using the nosodes of Streptococcus uberis, S. dysgalactiæ, S. agalactia, Escherichia coli, and Staphlococcus aureus-all 30c and combined in one remedy.

A herd of pedigree Friesian cows was randomly split into two groups of 41 cows for the purpose of this trial. There had been no historical difference in disease incidence between the two sides of the building or in the individuals in either group. They were not split according to yield, age or calving date, for it was felt that this sort of division (usual in intensive UK dairy herds) could materially affect results. Two coded bottles were supplied to the farmer: a bottle of unmedicated solvent (control) and a bottle of Combined mastitis nosode 30c tincture (treatment). These were administered to one or other group via the drinking water troughs. The results are shown in Table 1.

The one case in the treated group had suffered “summer mastitis” in her dry period earlier in the year in the same quarter of her udder. She contracted the recorded case in the first few weeks of the treatment period before, perhaps, the therapy had been given time to take effect.

In the control group several cows suffered repeated attacks in the same quarter. Revised results excluding the repeat cases are shown in Table 2.

Cell counts on bulk milk were recorded as a measure of subclinical mastitis status of the herd (Table 3). The favourable trend in all parameters makes this study very worthy of repetition.

TABLE 1. Double blind trial with unmedicated solvent (control) and Combined mastitis nosode (treatment) in a herd affected with mastitis (winter 1983/84)

	Control group	Treatment group
Cases of mastitis	19	1
Average No. of quarters affected	1.16	1
Average severity (scored 1-3)	2.16	1
Average duration in days	4.5	4
Average duration in days	25	2.5

 

TABLE 2: Results of Table 1 revised to exclude repeat cases

	Control group	Treatment group
Cases of mastitis	10	1
Average No. of quarters affected	1.2	1
Average severity (scored 1-3)	2	1
Average duration in days	4.6	4
% of group affected	25	2.5

 

TABLE 3: Cell counts on bulk milk (same herd as in Tables 1 & 2)

	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug
1982/83 No treatment	n/a	316	326	378	362	295	516	608	598
1983/84 Treatment	263*	273*	199*	255*	193*	283†	352†	184†	374†

 

* Treatment given to 41 cows only.
† Treatment given to whole herd.

Study 2
A problem herd of Friesian dairy cows was chosen as a very severe test of the ability of the nosode to favourably affect a disease situation. Historically incidence of mastitis had been at a very high, unacceptable level for the entire recorded life of the herd. Cell counts had run in the region of 1,000,000, and both parameters had proved intractable to all manner of management and medical control measures, calling in all available advisory bodies to assist.

It was finally decided, in order to limit the spread of mastitis in the herd, to separate the high risk cows from the low risk ones. There were now too many high risk cows to cull, so they were housed in a broken-down cubicle house away from the good cows. They were
identified by individual cell counting, mastitis history, age, conformation, and included all the cows which habitually rejected cubicles and chose to lie in the dung channels.

The good group was left untreated and to the bad group we gave the nosode in the drinking water.

Mastitis incidence and cell count figures have shown a decline in both groups. The good group was expected to improve once the high risk cows had been removed, but the bad group would not normally be expected to improve. It has however shown more rapid improvement than the good group (Table 4). Before treatment, there were three times as many cases in the bad group than in the good group. After treatment (but with the water troughs still frozen) the number of cases in the bad group had gone down to twice as many as in the good group. Subsequently, in the warmer weather, with water troughs unfrozen, the bad group had 75% as many cases as the good group. There was a larger number of cows in the good group, but the trend is clear. The cell count was falling rapidly in the bad group until there was an upsurge in both groups in late March (Table 5).

TABLE 4: Result of treating group of cows with high risk of mastitis with Combined mastitis nosode compared to untreated low risk group (winter 1984/85, different herd from Tables 1-3)

	Low risk n = 80	High risk n = 50
Before treatment	13	38 (approx x 3)
After treatment (frost)	11	24 (approx x 2)
After treatment (no frost)	20	15 ( x 0.75)

 

TABLE 5: Cell counts for herd in Table 4

Date	Low risk	High risk
14 Dec 84	553	1259
2 Jan 85	464	960
13 Jan 85	485	856
13 Mar 85	558	788
24 Mar 85	736	971

 

Tineke Verkade, of Hamilton, has a dairy farmer clientele principally using a strategy she has devised. This is her method:

The following mastitis prevention programme, as used by a considerable number of dairy farmers, appears to be extremely successful. But the programme must be followed diligently and consistently in order to obtain the desired result.

Part One – Whole herd treatment
Mastitis nosode – Put one capful in the water trough, once a day for three days only. Then one capful in the water trough once a week during the season.

If the somatic cell count has dropped considerably below accepted levels then increase the period from one week to two weeks.

Part Two – Individual treatment
In the event that your animal(s) show signs of clinical mastitis use the following remedy dispensed from a spray bottle.

SSC – Spray once on the moist part of the nose or spray once on the opened vagina at a distance of 20cm. Do not dilute the remedy used in the spray bottle!

Repeat at next milking if needed, for no longer than four days.

Other than SSC (a compound remedy of Sulphur, Silicea and Carbo vegetabilis) these remedies may be needed:

Bryonia Very hard quarters. The animal is in a lot of pain. Lies on the affected side and may have fever with the mastitis.

Phytolacca Udder is hard and very sensitive. Can see swollen glands around the udder. The udder may have a purple hue and the milk may have clots in it.

Urtica urens The udder is extremely swollen and tight especially in heifers even before they calve and the udder drips with milk.

Pyrogenium Remedy for septic states especially puerperal metritis. In the case of mastitis the udder is hard and swollen and the milk might be brown and contain pus.

Myristica Fistulas and abscesses with chronic mastitis.

If these prescriptions are not satisfactory specific nosodes, depending on the micro-organism present, can be considered.