Addition of meloxicam to the treatment of bovine clinical mastitis results in a net economic benefit to the dairy farmer.

Discipline: mastitis; Key words: bovine clinical mastitis, fertility, economics, animal health management. 

Clinical mastitis (CM), besides compromising cow welfare, results in economic losses through cost of treatment, production loss and withdrawal of milk. In addition, CM impairs reproductive performance, including a longer interval from calving to conception, more services per conception, lower conception rates and a higher risk of embryo loss. In a combined study carried out in six European countries, it was found that by adding  meloxicam (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug - Boehringer-Ingelheim) to antimicrobial treatment of mild to moderate CM, fertility of cows was improved. The treatment was associated with a higher proportion of cows conceiving at their first AI and a higher proportion of cows became pregnant by 120 days after calving. The number of AI required to achieve conception was also lower in the meloxicam-treated cows compared with the control cows. As fertility is extremely important in herd economics, Dr F.J.S. van Soest and colleagues hypothesized that improvements in fertility associated with treatment of mastitis with meloxicam would have an effect on profit. Their study was published in the Journal of Dairy Science, Volume 101 of 2018, page 3387 to 3397, the title being:Addition of meloxicam to the treatment of bovine clinical mastitis results in a net economic benefit to the dairy farmer. 

The objective of their study, therefore, was to assess whether the improved reproduction outcomes of treatment of CM with meloxicam would result in a positive net economic benefit to the farmer. The researchers developed a stochastic bio-economic simulation model, in which a dairy cow with CM in the first 120 days in milk was simulated. Two scenarios were simulated in which CM cases were treated with meloxicam in conjunction with antimicrobial therapy or with antimicrobial therapy alone (Control). Sensitivity analyses were done for the biological and economic components of the model to assess the effects of a wide range of inputs on the cost effectiveness of meloxicam treatment. 

The results showed an average net economic benefit of €42 (about R590) per CM case per year in favour of the meloxicam scenario. Cows in the Control treatment scenario had higher returns on milk production, lower costs upon calving and reduced costs of treatment. However, these did not outweigh the savings associated with lower feed intake, reduced number of inseminations and reduced culling rate. The net economic benefit favouring meloxicam therapy was a consequence of a better reproductive performance in which cows had a shorter calving to conception interval (132 versus 143 days), a shorter inter-calving interval (405 versus 416 days) and fewer inseminations per conception (2.9 versus 3.7), compared with cows in the Control scenario. This resulted in a shorter lactation, hence a lower lactational milk production (8,441 versus 8,517 kg per lactation) with lower feeding costs in the meloxicam group. A lower culling rate (12 versus 25%) resulted in lower replacement costs in the meloxicam treatment scenario. All of the scenarios evaluated in the sensitivity analyses favoured meloxicam treatment over no meloxicam. 

This study demonstrated that improvements in conception rate achieved by the use of meloxicam, as additional therapy for mild to moderate CM in the first 120 days in milk, have positive economic benefits. This inference remained true over a wide range of technical and economic inputs, demonstrating that use of meloxicam is likely to be cost effective across many production systems.