Having sound cow management leads to positive financial outcomes. Dr. Daryl Nydam, veterinarian and professor at Cornell University says knowing when to use dry-cow therapy or pathogen-based treatment has a direct correlation to a farmer’s bottom line.

The difference between selective dry cow therapy and blanket dry cow therapy is that blanket therapy is where you administer antimicrobial to all quarters of all cows at the beginning of their dry period. Whereas, selective dry cow therapy is anything less than 100% would be selected for treatment and the rest would not. Selective dry cow therapy saves about 80% of a farm’s dry cow cost.

Pathogen-based treatment is for clinical mastitis during the lactating period. This improves your bottom line by saving money on dry cow tubes and you also get those cows back in the milk string sooner.

“These two options compared to blanket dry cow therapy, after putting in the cost of using some method to decide which cows to treat or not, usually saves $25 to $30 per cow across the herd annually,” says Nydam.