VACCINE TREATMENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4858, 27 July 1925, Page 3

VACCINE TREATMENT.

NO PREVENTIVE OF MAMMITIS. RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS. The Director-General of Agriculture states that since the advent cf preventive treatment for contagious mammitis by means of vaccine the Department Jias been carrying out special experiments in order to determine the extent to which the vaccine treatment affords protection against the disease. A good deal of work has been done at the Wallaceville laboratory. and while it is not yet finally completed it will be of interest to state the results so far arrived at. These may be summed up as follows : In the first experiment three cows were used, two of them being vaccinated with the mammitis vaccine and one not vaccinated and used as a control. Of the two vaccinated cows one was afterwards directly inoculated with a small quantity of a pui e culture of the organism of contagious mammitis, the other with a small quantity of milk taken from a cow suffering from the disease, the non-vaecinated control cow being also infected with the same dope .and the same form of infective material into different quarters of the udder. The result was that all three contracted •contagious mammitis. Later, one vac•cinated cow and the non-vaccinated control cow have completely recovered, while the other v.accinated cc-w sitll shows the organisms of contagious mammitis in her milk.

A second experiment was conducted on five cows. Four had been treated with the' vaccine and one left unvaccinated as a control. All five were later inoculated with a small quantity of milk containing the germs of contagious mammitis. All of theni contracted the disease as a result of this artificial inoculation, but since three of the four vaccinated cows and the unvaccinated cow have recoveied, while one of the vaccinated cows still shows symptoms of the disease. These .are the results obtained so. far at Wallaceville, but further experimental work is being conducted.