Cows Culled for Mastitis

I had a good conversation with the new BI rep, Mark Eninga discussing mastitis issues.  I was commenting to him how successful dry-off programs have been at curing and preventing mastitis/high SCC.  This got me wondering what the average cull rate for mastitis is regionall.  Mark was awesome enough to call MN DHIA for me and got a report on these numbers.  The graphs Mark showed me were for 2008 to the present and also for last year.   There has been a dramatic increase from 2008.  The end of 2012 to the end of 2013 also showed a steady increase.  I believe there is a two-fold reason.  The first is the tougher requirements for bulk tank SCC.  Producers have been forced to cull out chronically high SCC cows.  Also, the favorable cull market has enabled producers to effectively cull cows that don't respond to treatments or again are chronic high SCC cows.  I will post the charts in a link.  Notice that cull rates due to mastitis have risen from the mid 3% to the high 5% mark.  It appears that in the period of 4 years cull rates due to mastitis have risen 2-3%.