Effects of homeopathic and antibiotic mastitis treatment considering mediumterm parameters in an organic dairy herd

Summary

Introduction: Homeopathic treatment is a common method against bovine mastitis in organic herds. In a study conducted in a large biodyn farm in Brandenburg (D) considering 261 cases of acute or chronical mastitis, we used four different combinations of homeopathic remedies depending on clinical state of the mastitis (e.g. general findings, pain, swelling or secretion). The remedies were administrated orally. The control group was treated with antibiotics intracisternally for three days at minimum until the cow was clinically cured or defined as therapy failure. While the cure rate was calculated from clinical and laboratory data (bacterial findings and somatic cell count), the further development of the treated cows during the lactation was confirmed using monthly provided somatic cell counts of cows, mastitis and culling data. Results: We found an overall cure rate (complete healing) after administration of homeopathic remedies (H) of 21.7 % compared to 35.8 % in the antibiotically treated control group (A). Though there was an obviously poor treatment success in the homeopathy group, we found no remarkable depression of general udder health in the herd. So it was fair to assume that there must exist positive mediumterm effects of homeopathic remedies. We compared the parameters "Remain in Lactation (RIL)", "Acceptable Cell Count (ACC; < 200.000/ ml)" and analysed the reasons of culling or leaving production by other reasons. We found that there were no differences in RIL (H: 26 % vs. A: 24 %) and ACC (14 % vs. 10 %) in general six month after treatment. The risk of unsuccessful homeopathic treatment during the observing time only was higher in cases of Staph. aureus mastitis and in cows in second lactation. The most important fact was that treated cows which were classified as- subclinical infected 3 weeks after treatment- (n = 35) showed the best relative mediumterm results in the homeopathatic treatment group (ACC: 10 % vs. 0 %; RIL: 29 % vs. 7 %). We conclude that maybe the time frame of 3 weeks after treatment is not suitable to describe the effects of regulatory (homeopathic) mastitis treatment. The mediumterm effects at least six months after treatment are comparable to those after antibiotic administration. We suppose that it is possible to keep the udder health standard in a herd avoiding antibiotics.