Abstract
Mastitis is one of the most economically important diseases of dairy animals in Pakistan. The cure rate of mastitis with the use of antibiotics/antibacterials leaves a lot to be desired. In addition, the use of these agents leads to undesirable residues in milk and poses a host of problems to milk processing industry. Therefore, measures other than the use of antibiotics/antibacterial s are being investigated to improve the mastitis cure rate. Keeping these considerations in perspective, the current study was planned to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of autogenous animal-specific mastitis vaccines alone and in combination with antibiotic based rational therapy. For this purpose, preparation of autogenous mastitis vaccine was carried out from the isolates of individual animals suffering from subclinical mastitis (n=60). The selected animals were randomly divided into 3 equal groups. Group A received autogenous mastitis vaccine alone, group B received routine mastitis therapy while group C received combination of both these treatments. The efficacy of the treatments was evaluated through Surf Field Mastitis Test (SFMT) based cure rate, bacteriological cure rate and somatic cell counts (SCC). The treatments led to an SFMT based cure rate of 75%, 80% and 85% respectively. The bacteriological cure rate observed for groups A, B and C were 70%, 70% and 75% respectively, at completion of study period, whereas there was statistically non-significant difference in SCC values in all the groups. The study reveals that autogenous mastitis vaccine led to a comparable results and can be a suitable replacement for antibiotic therapy in subclinical mastitis without any fear of antibiotic residues.