Summer Mastitis in Belgium Geographical Distribution and Economic Loss

Abstract

After inventarisation of the summer mastitis regions in Belgium, we counted the number of cattle in these regions and also the number of calves and heifers. About 30% of these summer mastitis regions had a sandy soil and 70% a loam soil. There was a remarkably good correlation between the wooded area of Belgium and the summer mastitis areas. Loss per case was estimated at 444 E.C.U. for pure milk types, 222 E.C.U. for mixed types and 100 E.C.U. for meat types. Given an incidence of 2% summer mastitis in young cattle we calculated for Belgium a loss of 800,000 E.C.U. on 150,000 milking type animals, 523,000 E.C.U. on 197,000 mixed type animals and 668,000 E.C.U. on 789,000 meat type animals. The same calculation was done for a 6% summer mastitis incidence. The total loss in Belgium amounts to 5,770,000 E.C.U. for 6% summer mastitis and 2,000,000 E.C.U. for 2% summer mastitis. Finally, we estimated the maximum costs for summer mastitis prevention with a 2% incidence. Per animal, this was 8.90 E.C.U., 4.40 E.C.U., and 2.00 E.C.U. for milk-, mixed-, and meat types respectively.