Integrated disease control in dairy herds: a case study from the veterinarians' viewpoint

Integrated control of bovine virus diarrhoea virus, bovine herpesvirus-1, L eptospira interrogans serovar hardjo subtype hardjobovis, Mycobacterium avi um subsp. paratuberculosis, and Salmonella dublin in dairy herds may provid e economic benefits superior to those obtained by sequential disease contro l, because, among other things, it allows optimization of voluntary culling . However, in practice there are no adequate instruments to establish prior ities in voluntary culling. Therefore, in this study the priorities in deci sion-making for voluntary culling of infected cattle, as indicated by more than 300 cattle veterinarians, were analysed. Based on our results and supplementary consideration, the priorities for vo luntary culling in the Netherlands can be ranked as 1(st), cull S. dublin c arriers, 2(nd), cull persistently infected BVDV carriers, 3(rd), cull parat uberculosis faecal culture positive cattle and their last offspring, 4(th), cull in paratuberculosis infected herds, paratuberculosis ELISA positive c attle and their last offspring and cull, in low prevalence herds, BHV1 gE-p ositive cattle, and 5(th), cull leptospirosis seropositive cattle. Since th is ranking was based on one case study only, other priorities may prevail i n other herds.