Mathematical modeling for the control of fly-borne mastitis disease in cattle

Abstract

Several diseases cause losses in cattle farming, especially in the dairy industry among which mastitis disease (Bovine mastitis) is the leading cause of health and economic damages globally as it results in animals' ill health and reduced quality and quantity of milk produced by infected cows. Some mathematical studies have been conducted that focused on mastitis transmission from one udder-quarter to another in an infected cow, even though clinical studies established the cow–cow and flies–cow transmissions. The present study, therefore, proposed a mathematical model for the control of mastitis disease in cattle in the presence of flies as vectors. The formulated model was shown to have non-negative solutions in feasible regions for both cattle and flies populations. Furthermore, the model has a stable disease-free equilibrium if the sum of the effective reproduction numbers for cattle–cattle and fly–cattle transmissions (ℜch and ℜch) is less than unity, and there is a possibility of multiple endemic equilibria if otherwise. The numerical results indicated that the infectious populations can be reduced if the rates of the control parameters are increased, thereby curtailing or eradicating mastitis in the cattle population.