Disease RecordingA Cross-Roads for the Dairy Industry

David Kelton, DVM, PhD

Department of Population MedicineUniversity of Guelph

Questions to be addressed………

Why record disease events?

Where did this road begin?

How far have we come?

What are the paths ahead?

What do you think?

Our Interest in Animal Health

The Ontario Milk Act says:

“Milk from healthy cows”

What does ‘healthy’ mean?

Why record clinical cases of disease?

• Diagnosis and therapy of sick• Health management – benchmarking• Biosecurity - animal movement• Genetic selection – functional traits• Surveillance for status & trade• Research – prevention & control• Sign-off for herd health status

Diseases of interest…………Major Diseases Impacting Canada’s Dairy Herds

Condition Importance Infectious Non-Infectious

Udder Health Milk Quality Mastitis Cleanliness

Lameness Welfare Digital Dermatitis Laminitis

Reproductive Longevity Metritis/Endometritis Heat Detection

Calf Diseases Future of Herd Diarrhea & Pneumonia Underfeeding

Foreign Animal Diseases

Trade & Survival FMD / BLV

Production Limiting

Milk, Calves & Meat Johne’s Sub-Clinical

Ketosis

Zoonoses Consumers & Farm Families Crypto

Farm Level&

Practice Level

National Disease Recording - History

1990’s• Lots of clinical disease diagnosed daily• Computers allow ‘easy’ collection of data• Interest in National Disease Recording for

surveillance and genetic evaluation!• The next logical step…….

The Dairy Information LOOP

COWFILE

LAB

MilkRecordingSystem (CMIP)

AMS &/orOn-farm

DC305/Scout

milksamples

OtherAdvisor

Veterinarian

HerdOwner

AICDN

Breeds

CSR

DC305

Paper ReportsDC305

National Disease Recording - History

Focus on Peri-partum Diseases

– Retained Placenta

– Metritis

– Mastitis

– Milk Fever

– Ketosis

– Lameness

– Displaced Abomasum

Recommendations for National Standards

Prepared for:Cattle Breeding Research Council of Canada - 1997

Canadian National Health Project -2007

CanWest DHI Health Report

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 20100

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100% of Herds Recording ANY Disease Event

Herds Recording Disease Events

Canadian Health Project

2X

Challenges of Disease Recording• Disease Definitions

– Clinical….Sub-clinical….“Test” Accuracy….Repeatability….• Does disease get recorded at all….anywhere….how much?• Does disease get into an electronic database….anywhere?• Does disease get uploaded to a central location….where?• Can disease move from a local bureau to a central location?• Is there any disease data validation….anywhere?

Disease Events Recorded on Ontario Dairy Farms from 1999 to 2009!

Percent of Herds Recording Specific Disease Event Events/HerdDisease 1999 2004 2009 2009Retained Placenta 10 8 29 3.9Metritis (Acute) 2 4 16 4.6Mastitis 10 17 61 8.3LamenessProblem 5 7 25 6.4Ketosis 4 3 11 4.8Milk Fever 6 4 17 2.5DisplacedAbomasum 9 8 30 2.8

How do we measure progress?

Genetic Evaluations with Canadian Data

Disease Incidence s2s x 104 SE(s2

s) x 104 s2y h2

Mastitis 7.7% 3.049 0.667 0.067 0.018

Lameness 5.1% 0.501 0.285 0.045 0.004

Cystic ovarian disease 6.4% 2.618 0.647 0.057 0.018

Displaced abomasum 3.1% 2.154 0.337 0.030 0.029

Ketosis 3.6% 0.772 0.289 0.033 0.009

Metritis / uterine disease 5.3% 0.247 0.207 0.046 0.002

Milk fever 4.2% 2.024 0.568 0.038 0.021

Retained placenta 4.4% 1.655 0.400 0.042 0.016

Table 4. Estimated incidence, sire (s2s) and phenotypic (s2

y) variances, and heritabilities (h2) for 8 disease traits when only data from herds with at least 1 case of the disease analyzed are kept in the dataset.

T. F.-O. Neuenschwander, 2009

Genetic Evaluations with Canadian Data

Relationship between percentage of healthy cows and relative breeding value (RBV) for mastitis resistance of sires with at least 30 daughters (n=180)

A. Koeck et al., 2011

SCC&

Clinical Mastitis

Veterinary Sign-off on Animal Health

• EU – Dairy Herd Health Declaration and RAMP

• USA – Food Safety Modernization Act – Jan, 2011

Options moving forward……..

• Status quo…..• Increase emphasis on milk testing• Incorporate AHL submission data• Target a particular disease…….

Event Total Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec ========================================================================= FRESH 301 20 25 28 10 32 19 27 25 25 37 28 25 HEAT 195 23 10 15 14 4 7 22 19 23 27 16 15 BRED 569 42 45 67 53 42 27 38 56 49 46 54 50 PREG 436 56 33 34 30 70 33 26 14 36 38 54 12 OPEN 97 7 10 6 3 8 11 7 9 10 8 16 2 DRY 237 22 23 17 11 24 17 13 29 26 15 19 21 ABORT 11 1 3 4 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 DNB 30 5 4 0 1 0 3 4 1 3 2 7 0 SOLD 99 9 13 6 7 10 8 4 10 8 7 12 5 DIED 5 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 FOOTRIM 384 2 0 10 6 16 25 20 61 213 9 8 14 PGF 709 65 64 73 47 65 50 42 55 43 46 74 85 BSCORE 528 48 94 95 105 186 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 GNRH 18 2 4 6 1 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CYSTIC 161 13 12 12 11 12 11 12 10 10 21 30 7 DA 14 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 1 2 1 3 2 KETOSIS 10 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 3 2 LAME 36 1 0 0 1 0 7 10 16 1 0 0 0 MAST 107 6 10 13 4 15 5 2 13 11 10 6 12 METR 151 9 7 12 5 16 14 9 20 18 17 7 17 MF 10 0 0 1 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 3 3 RP 81 3 8 10 0 8 8 14 3 8 6 10 3 TOTALS 5939 477 489 530 432 687 370 404 498 656 474 541 381

Disease Event Recording through DC305

Used at the FARM and PRACTICE Level

>75% of Ontario dairy Herds are enrolled with DHI

Increased Testing of Milk

Easy access to individual cow (& bulk tank) milk samples for Active and Passive Surveillance

Milk tests – easy but NOT cheap!• Johne’s Disease• BLV• Neospora• Staph aureus• Strep ag• Ketones• BVD• ??????

Surveillance Coverage – Milk vs. Serum

AHL Submission Data for Syndromic Surveillance

??

??

??

??

Nanda Dorea, 2011

Detecting aberrations in baseline data

Ontario Johne’s Education and Management Assistance Program

Risk Assessment and Management Plan (RAMP)

Johne’s Disease……..Targetted Dairy Biosecurity

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320 340 360 380 400 420 440 460 480 500 520 540 560 580 600 620 640 660 680 700 720 740 760 780 8000

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Distribution of the Monthly Average Bulk Tank SCCfor the Years 2009 to 2010

Monthly Average Bulk Tank SCC

Perc

ent

Coming August, 2012

SCC Penalty Level from 500 to 400

400 500

~9%

Mastitis CasesMastitis CulturesMastitis Treatment (CQM)

Which path should we follow?

• As animal health and production professionals, where do you see value in the ongoing efforts to capture Disease Events on Canadian Dairy Farms?

dkelton@uoguelph.ca

Acknowledgements and Questions