Mastitis symptoms

Mastitis. Characterized by localized redness, tenderness, and warmth on one breast accompanied by fever and flulike symptoms. Although uncommon, symptoms also may be bilateral. Nipple candidiasis. Typical symptoms include nipple pain, itching, burning, and/or breast pain that persist after feeding. Gestational diabetes. See Chapter 40. 

Acute clinical mastitis is characterised by a range of visible cardinal inflammation symptoms. These are used in the diagnosis of the disease and can be divided into rubor (redness), tumor (swelling), dolor (pain), calor (warmness) and functio laesa (dysfunction, represented by secretory alterations like flakes, clots and aqueous milk secret). However, not all five symptoms... 

Besides the acute type of mastitis, which is generally accompanied by a more or less decrease in general health condition of the affected cow, less severe types of mastitis expressing only secretion symptoms are more common in dairy practice. These types are called chronic mastitis. An interim type is the so-called sub-acute mastitis with slight inflammation symptoms. The severity levels and symptoms of mastitis are described in Table 11.3. 

Sub-clinical mastitis, on the other hand, has no visible symptoms and can only be diagnosed with laboratory methods (Wendt et al., 1994) (see below). The diagnosis of sub-clinical mastitis depends on two parameters, the microbiological profile of sampled milk and the somatic cell count (Hamann and Fehlings, 2002). The different severity levels of mastitis and symptoms used in diagnosis are described in Table 11.3. 

The objective of mastitis treatments is to cure the infected udders from the infection, but cure is defined in very different ways. For example, in economic terms, the farmer needs to achieve a level of udder health that allows expected milk yields and quality parameters specified by processors/ national regulations to be achieved. On the other hand, cure with respect to antibiotic treatments, is often defined in terms of absence of bacterial pathogens in milk (bacterial cure), with the proportion of cows without detectable pathogen presence following treatment being defined as the bacterial cure rate (BCR). The main problem with using BCR as the main indicator of cure is that it was frequently shown to include a proportion of cows with drastically elevated SCC values (indicative of sub-clinical mastitis) after treatment, but without clinical (sensory) symptoms. 

There are two principal ways of antibiotic administration, which may be used (i) the local, intracisternal application and/or (ii) systemic injection or infusion. For clinical mastitis, cure rates based on visual assessment of symptoms after either local or systemic administration of antibiotics were... 

Signs and Symptoms Characterized by fever, sudden appearance of vesicles or blisters on the mouth, nose, feet, and teats. The blisters quickly rupture to leave erosions or ulcers. Animals with mouth ulcers drool (ptyalism) and back off of feed. Due to sore feet, animals prefer to lie down. Cattle may also lose one or both horns of the foot. Animals with teat lesions are hard to milk and prone to mastitis. 

Symptoms and indications Amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, agalactia, swelling and pain caused by acute mastitis, slow and painful stranguria... 

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