I am ready for the challenge!
Bovine mastitis is the principal disease in dairy cattle and is one of the more expensive disorders for dairy producers. Still, I think it is one of the most underestimated and left-out diseases during university courses.
As veterinary students we learn the basics of this disease and how to cure it, but nobody prepares us for the complexity of it in real life, neither on the importance of herd-level data. However, nowadays veterinarians must not only be able to treat any singular episode of mastitis but they should also be able to analyse the entire herd management, including environmental and welfare aspects, and advise farmers on what the best choices are to make for their herds.
Despite the initial difficulties young veterinarians encounter, I strongly believe that working in the area of mastitis and milk quality is very challenging and interesting. It is in fact an area in which new challenges and approaches are part of the daily agenda. The number of animals per farm are constantly increasing, new farm systems are in continuous development, even in the milking parlour, and legislation on animal welfare and antibiotic reduction is in continuous evolution. Especially under these conditions I believe that young veterinarians have an advantage as during our university years we learn about the importance of antibiotic use on farms, and we learn about the correct approach for the selection and prescription of such important drugs. Thanks to that we have a wider view on the alternatives that can be used to reduce antibiotic consumption, for example through selective rather than blanket treatments.
So, there are a lot of ways in which a young veterinarian such as myself can get involved, by challenging ourselves and by implementing new approaches to improve udder health mastitis and milk quality! I am ready for it.
Silvia Beschi, graduated in veterinary medicine at the University of Turin, Italy in November 2022. Her thesis focused on the use of a selective dry cow therapy program in five Italian dairy herds. She is currently doing a three-month Erasmus traineeship under the supervision of professor dr. Sarne De Vliegher with M-team at Ghent University.
