Mastitis — inflammation of the udder — is the most common and costly disease in dairy cattle. Effective prevention and pain management are essential components of dairy cow welfare.
Mastitis causes significant pain that has historically been undertreated in dairy cattle. The acute pain of clinical mastitis — swelling, heat, and inflammation of the udder — causes cows to shift weight, refuse milking, and show behavioral indicators of severe discomfort. Yet analgesic treatment remains inconsistently applied, partly because NSAIDs add cost and require veterinary prescription in some jurisdictions. Research clearly demonstrates that combining NSAID anti-inflammatory treatment with antibiotics improves both welfare and clinical outcomes: pain relief reduces cortisol stress responses that impair immune function, improving bacteriological cure rates. Prevention is the welfare-optimal approach: strict milking hygiene, functional teat dipping, systematic dry cow therapy, prompt treatment of clinical cases, and culling chronically infected cows that serve as reservoirs of infection all reduce mastitis incidence. Somatic cell count monitoring identifies subclinical cases early, enabling intervention before clinical disease develops.