Previous research has demonstrated the importance of the dry and lactating periods in mastitis control. Cases are labelled by the likely origin of infection: dry period or lactation origin, based on the days in milk at the index case. Dry period origin cases are those where the index case occurred <31 days in milk. Lactation origin cases are those where the index case occurred between 31-305 days in milk.
The example data on the right shows variation in the number of clinical mastitis cases reported each month (between 1-15). Numerically, the majority of cases are lactation origin (yellow), with a lot of recurrences (green).
