Nordic Mastitis Research Network collaborates to gain and share knowledge that enhance dairy udder health and milk quality
Background and current focus of the network
Already since 2017, the Nordic Mastitis Research Network has aimed to foster scientific collaboration among dedicated researchers and advisors working with bovine mastitis and udder health in the Nordic region covering Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. This network is built on professional teamwork, enhancing synergy and mutual support to achieve common goals. The long-term objective of the network is to improve the health, welfare, and milk quality of dairy cattle in the Nordic countries while ensuring safe dairy products for consumers. At present, the network comprises approximately 40-50 active members, including researchers, advisory veterinarians, stakeholders, PhD students, and postdocs. In the ongoing funding period, the agenda of the network is “Healthy udders through a herd health perspective”.
The network is currently led by Riitta Niemi from the University of Helsinki, with core group also including Camilla Kielland (Norwegian University of Life Sciences), Line Svennesen & Svenja Woudstra (University of Copenhagen), Josef Dahlberg (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), and Dinah Seligsohn (Swedish Veterinary Agency). This group of six fellow researchers has actively participated in the network’s previous activities. A year ago, they were excited to apply for funding to extend the collaboration network and take on the leadership of the network’s future activities. They all saw the positive effects of getting to know each other and gaining insight into the different ongoing research projects. The current core group wishes to express its gratitude to the previous leadership team, whose efforts and ideas laid a solid foundation for cooperation and enabled younger colleagues to continue earlier progress seamlessly (https://m2-magazine.org/nordic-mastitis-researchers-network-develops-strategy-for-scandinavian-dairy-sector/).
While the network previously focused on prudent antibiotic use, the current initiative emphasizes the importance of mastitis prevention and the establishment of harmonized herd-level mastitis key performance indicators (KPIs). As the dairy industry evolves, together with technological advancements, the importance of a multidisciplinary network bringing together experts in udder health management is essential to maintain sustainable milk production. This collaboration facilitates the exchange of up-to-date knowledge on evidence-based mastitis management derived from diverse research projects and practical advisory work with farmers. By optimizing the use of herd-level information available in the Nordic databases, the network aims to improve the daily udder health monitoring and management in the dairy industry across the Nordic region.
Network activities
Over the past eight years, the network has already organized seven engaging social and scientific Nordic Mastitis Seminars in a row, all of which were partially funded by the Nordic Joint Committee for Agricultural and Food Research, NKJ (https://nordicagriresearch.org/). The primary objective of the NKJ is to strengthen research and innovation systems in the agriculture and food sector in the Nordic countries. NKJ emphasizes that continuous production and supply of knowledge from research is important to realize the sectors opportunities and potential in the future, a statement with which the Nordic mastitis network fully agrees.
The first Nordic mastitis seminar was held in 2018, in Uppsala, and since then, the network has gathered almost annually in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, or Norway. The seminars have mainly been face-to-face meetings, except for one remote seminar and one hybrid seminar during Covid-19. These meetings combine seminars on recent Nordic advancements in udder health research and workshops on strategic development. The other activities of the network include for example promoting the use of evidence-based information on dairy farms, maintaining an up-to-date list of Nordic mastitis research, and actively integrating new doctoral students into the scientific community. The former steering group has also published an article reviewing the Nordic approach to mastitis treatment, in which prudent use of antibiotics has been at the center for many years (Rajala-Schultz et al., 2021. Prudent use of antibiotics in dairy cows: The Nordic approach to udder health).
Common features of the dairy sector in the Nordic countries
The dairy sector in the Nordic region shares several common features that distinguish it from other regions, characterized by high production per cow and the high use of automatic milking robots. A notable aspect of the Nordic dairy industry is its commitment to the prudent use of antibiotics, resulting in the lowest antibiotic consumption in livestock production among European countries (Rajala-Schultz et al., 2021). In addition,the Nordic countries have also witnessed long-term positive trends and progress in dairy udder health over the years. These achievements are due to strict regulations and a cultural emphasis on responsible practices.
While many aspects of farm and udder health management are shared between the Nordic countries, there are also noticeable differences. Most prominent is the big difference in average farm sizes. Danish farms have grown rapidly in recent decades and have today on average about 260 dairy cows while farm sizes in Sweden (avg. 113 cows per farm), Norway (avg. 33 cows per farm), and Finland (avg. 62 cows per farm) are considerably smaller. These different farm sizes are associated with different farm management styles as well as different milking system setups. Also, legislation and industry agreements are often country specific, leading to, for example, different treatment regimens for antimicrobial dry cow therapy. As an example, in Denmark a repeated high somatic cell count (SCC) in recent test milkings or the detection of any bacteria in a milk sample justify the use of antimicrobial dry cow therapy. In contrast, in Norway, only the detection of a major mastitis pathogen or a consistently high SCC justifies an antimicrobial treatment. Furthermore, mastitis diagnostics differ between the countries. Finland primarily uses qPCR-based diagnostics on aseptic quarter-milk samples whereas in the other countries the analysis of quarter-milk samples mainly relies on conventional culture methods, only partly in combination with PCR. In Denmark, the veterinary practitioners do most of the bacterial culture diagnoses. In Sweden, bacteriological examinations are performed by veterinary practitioners and external laboratories. In Finland and Norway, milk samples are mainly submitted to external laboratories, enabling the collection of microbiological results to large databases.
Collaboration among stakeholders is another defining characteristic of the Nordic dairy sector. Stakeholders such as farmers, veterinarians, researchers, and regulatory bodies have a culture to work together to develop evidence-based guidelines for managing udder health and to develop high standards of animal health. Already from the early 80’, the Nordic region has prioritized thorough microbiological analysis. The routine collection of a vast number of milk samples enables veterinarians and farmers to identify the specific causative agents of mastitis, both at individual and at herd level, and to select the most effective and optimal treatment options.
Data sources for udder health monitoring
Data collection and monitoring of udder health are vital components of the Nordic dairy production. National dairy herd improvement organizations gather extensive data on milk production, somatic cell counts, and veterinary diagnoses from farms across the region. This information is recorded in centralized national databases, allowing for effective monitoring of udder health and productivity. The high coverage of milk recording schemes (approximately 90% in Denmark, 80% in Finland, 97% in Norway, and 73% in Sweden) ensures that farmers have access to reliable data to inform their management decisions.
The use of electronic systems for data collection enhances the accuracy and efficiency of monitoring animal health. This area is developing fast and is driven by e.g. automatization, sensor technologies and developments in artificial intelligence. It is also a field in which there is a need to collaborate between research areas to improve data quality and its utilization by recognizing best practices for using sensor data and herd-health indicators. The herd-health data together with the data from automated systems, provide abundant amounts of information. However, researchers in the network feel that interpreting and optimally using the information to prevent disease and strengthening farm profitability needs active knowledge sharing and multidisciplinary collaboration.
The 7th Nordic Mastitis Seminar provided insights on ongoing research and herd-level data utilization
Despite the gray, late-autumn weather, udder health researchers started their November with sunny enthusiasm as they participated in the latest Nordic Udder Health seminar organized as an in-person event in Tuusula, Finland on November 3-4, 2025. The target audience included veterinarians, researchers, and graduate students working with bovine udder health. A total of 35 researchers and veterinarians from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom participated in the two-day seminar. The participants represented a wide range of experience and expertise in international research on udder health, practical clinical work, mastitis diagnostics, teaching, and dairy advisory services. Despite the busy and full schedule, the seminar days were also filled with engaging conversations among both new and familiar colleagues, spiced up by fun moments at the dinner table.
The official seminar program provided up-to-date introductions to the latest mastitis research currently conducted by junior researchers in the Nordic countries and offered an interesting insight into the current key topics in udder health research, such as dry cow therapy, inflammatory responses to mastitis, metagenomic diagnostics, and antimicrobial resistance. From University of Copenhagen, Nadja Alsted presented preliminary results of her PhD project aiming to compare quarter- versus cow-based selective dry cow therapy. Based on a controlled field trial, Nadja reported a considerable reduction in proportion of quarters treated with antimicrobials when quarter-based selection was applied, but a higher proportion of new infections was indicated from the crude analysis. A lesson learned was the increased labor for quarter-level selection and treatment, and a low compliance to protocol compared to the cow-based selection. PhD student Muusa Takala from University of Helsinki introduced her research project focusing on Streptococcus uberis mastitis, its prevalence, risk factors, and prognosis. Her research aims also to assess genetic variation, antibiotic susceptibility and contagiousness of the bacteria. Other PhD students presenting at the seminar were Marianne Huuskonen from Finland, focusing on qPCR diagnostics, Alicja Krsysmann from Norway, studying host-pathogen-microbiome interactions in the bovine udder, and Frederik Damsgaard from Denmark, researching the microbiological quality of milk and its associations with udder health, skin microbiota, and the environment.
In addition to presenting ongoing research, the central theme of the seminar was national udder health KPIs and best practices for their utilization in herd-level udder health management. The keynote speakers from Germany (Volker Krömker, University of Hannover) and from Great Britain (James Hanks, University of Reading, PAN Livestock Services) introduced participants to the topic by sharing their experiences with the use of mastitis KPIs for on-farm udder health improvements. They discussed in detail how they use KPIs to identify and monitor the changes in udder health at the herd-level as well as benchmarking between farms. Slight variations existed. For example, differences were related to whether udder health management seemed to place more emphasis on monitoring new mastitis cases or identifying chronic mastitis cases. It became evident that also definitions of for example chronic cases differed between countries.
Along with the keynote speakers, invited speakers from Finland (Anri Timonen, University of Oulu), Denmark (Michael Farre, SEGES Innovation P/S), Sweden (Åsa Lundberg, Växa), and Norway (Camilla Kielland, Norwegian University of Life Sciences) presented country-specific mastitis KPIs currently in use, as well as the nationally used herd health monitoring programs for compiling them. As mentioned, the size and production structure of dairy herds vary between Nordic countries. Consequently, there are differences in the indicators and monitoring programs used because national structures are often built to meet the different specific needs of each country. Despite variations, udder health data is collected through accredited dairy herd health monitoring systems in each country. Additionally, industry stakeholders, such as dairies and advisory organizations, maintain systems for collecting udder health data and monitoring programs.
Participants from each country identified areas for improvement in their own monitoring systems. A common area for development was the need to develop more precise indicators to define chronic mastitis and to describe different cure rates, including microbiological cure rates. From the group discussion, it became clear that the ideal monitoring system should be based on definitions that are country unspecific. Additionally, the system should continuously evolve and would include, not only mastitis KPIs, but also animal welfare indexes and economic aspects.
The next gathering of Nordic udder health researchers will take place in Denmark in 2026, focusing on sensor data important for udder health management which are automatically collected in dairy herds. Also, best practice use of herd-level mastitis information will be part of the discussion. Once again, we are looking forward to active discussion and friendly cooperation between Nordic mastitis researchers and other stakeholders.
