Advice for dairy farmers: Eight tubes per cow can make drying off a big job

Many farmers will start to dry off spring-calving cows during October.

Some farmers struggle with this job, resulting in poor cure rates during the dry period, and cows calving down with a higher cell count than at drying off.

Poor dry-off procedures will increase both the number of cows with elevated cell counts at calving and the number of cows developing mastitis in the first 30 days next spring.