A meeting was held on “Udder health Monitoring” at clinical building 3rd floor in Chattogram Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (CVASU), Chattogram on 29th September 2019. The meeting was arranged by udder health Bangladesh (UHB) and supported by the Department of Livestock Service (DLS), Eskayef Pharmaceuticals Limited, Animal Health Division, and CVASU. Prof. Dr. Md. Mizanur Rahman, coordinator, UHB facilitated the meeting. Dr. Md. Farhad Hossain, DD, Chattogram Division; Dr. Md. Reajul Huq, DLO, Chattogram; Prof. Dr. Mohammed Yousuf  Elahi Chowdhury, Head, Department of Medicine and Surgery; Prof. Dr. Bhajan Chandra Das, Director, SAQTVH; Dr. Delower Hossain, Lecturer, SAU; Dr. Shuvo Singha, Dr. Harun, Dr. Ashraf and other members of UHB and dairy farmers from different places of Chattogram attended the meeting. Members of dairy farmers association Prof. Md. Ibrahim, Malik Omar, Shahed Ayalulah Khan, Maolana Omar Faruk, Abu Hanif, Md. Iqbal Hossain, Kawser Shah, Sagar Chowdhury, Eng. Altaf Hossain, Wahid Zia, Mohammad Ali, Kamrul Islam, Md. Noor, Farhat Hossain were present as key participants.

The discussion was started with Clinical Mastitis decision tree presented by Dr. Ovirup Bhusan Paul. The decision tree was prepared by the UHB team headed by Dr. Ylva Persson, SVA Sweden and colleagues from the USA, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh to make a guideline for the treatment of clinical mastitis for field practitioners and farmers. Ovirup discussed different grades of clinical mastitis and guideline for the treatment to reduce the use of antibiotics. Prof. Dr. Mizanur Rahman added some important information on the decision tree and also talked about diagnostic kit for the detection of gram-positive/ negative bacteria used in England and Sweden. Farmers attended the meeting asked several questions about the decision tree. UHB has started bacterial culture and detection of sensitivity of antibiotics against detected bacteria in medicine lab. Dr. Chowdhury told that the Medicine lab is ready to continue these activities now.  Dr. Md. Farhad Hossain talked about the anti-microbial resistant (AMR) and its effect, future threats for human health and economic losses due to AMR. He advised farmers to use antibiotics very cautiously. A farmer asked what he should do if one quarter is affected. Dr. Md. Farhad Hossain advised him to use gloves, follow milking order and use antibiotics after anti-microbial susceptibility test.

Dr. Shuvo Singha presented his discussion on “Bulk Milk Somatic Cell Count: Our knowledge and responsibility”. He clarifies the concept of bulk milk somatic cell count, its importance for milk as safe food and why it increases. It is very important for the farmers to know about the somatic cell count of their farms to know the status of udder health. Dr. Shuvo shared some ideas on how to reduce somatic cell count in milk by improving management practices.

Dr. Shuvo also shared the udder health study result and proposed 400000 cells/mL as the thresh-hold value of SCC for Bangladesh. UHB proposed a grading of BMSCC in Chattogram: <200,000 is super quality; 200,000 to <400,000 is excellent; 400,000 to <600,000 is very good; 600,000 to <800,000 good and 800,000 to 100000 is fair. Farmers asked several questions after his presentation. Such as, does SCC increases after a few hours of milking? Can they use probiotic in case of mastitis? What can they do if CMT scores 3 or 4? Dr. Shuvo and other UHB members answered the questions. They also discussed the relationship between genetics and mastitis. There is some evidence that mastitis occurrence is very low in some cows which may be due to their superior genetic makeup.

Then, Dr. Delower Hossain, lecturer, SAU came with an interesting presentation on his recent visit to the Netherlands. He visited Netherlands to receive the prestigious Gustav Rosenberger Memorial (GRMF) Award. He talked about his presentation in the congress. The most interesting thing about his presentation was the floating dairy farm in the sea, organic dairy farm, and robotic milking. At the end of his presentation, he made several recommendations, such as farmers should self-dependent on electricity, self-dependency on the marketing of milk, use formulated ration and regular screening of BMSCC.

David Ericsson, a masters’ student from “Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden” talked about the dairy industry of Sweden and its marketing system of milk. The treatment protocol in Sweden is different from Bangladesh. He mentioned that Sweden is one of the lowest antibiotic using countries of the world. The thresh hold of SCC starts from 130,000 in Sweden and they usually cull/slaughter animals if they have SCC 600,000 cells/ml for a longer time. The farmers in Sweden get premium for low BMSCC and penalty when it crosses 400000 cells/mL of milk. Swedish Dairy industry is heavily depending on economic support by the Swedish government and European Union.   

Farmers presented some demand to the senior DLS members, such as, to make CMT test available in Upazila level, SCC standard should suit in our situation and they also suggest to follow India and Pakistan for SCC thresh hold. Dr. Md. Farhad Hossain, Dr. Reajul Huq, and Pro. Dr. Mizanur Rahman agreed to discuss further on BMSCC and sit with farmers to set hygienic, BMSCC grading and antibiotic residue issues and certify milk of farms who are interested. They suggest the farmers should improve farm hygiene, follow good farm management and not to use antibiotics without antimicrobial sensitivity test. Farmers should follow the rules to make his farm more profitable and produce good quality milk. There is a talk that “Healthy cows produce healthy milk”.

Dr. Reajul Huq took the attention of the farmers about the recent outbreak of lumpy skin disease in Chattogram: What gov. has done for them to tackle the disease and the future plan. At last Dr. Rabbi, Eskayef Pharmaceutical Limited gave a presentation on commercial products used for dairy cows. Prof. Dr. Mizanur Rahman concluded the meeting by reminding the farmers about SCC and thanked them for attending the meeting.