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Today’s consumers demand highest quality products 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Pasteurized milk that is processed from raw milk with a somatic cell count (SCC) below 250,000 – has a significantly longer shelf life than products made from milk with an SCC above 500,000.
An inflammation caused by bacterial infection of the mammary gland, – mastitis – occurs in the udder and can be present in two forms, clinical and sub-clinical.
With an udder infection, the cow’s body defensively sends somatic cells to the gland and the quantity of these can then be counted, in the milk. Clinical mastitis shows clearly in milk changes, udder swelling and other teat-related irregularities. It also highly visible on the farm’s accounts, not the least in associated expenses attributed to veterinary charges and antibiotics. Major profit slayers – including tissue damage and negative changes in milk compositional quality – are also blatant. The more common sub-clinical mastitis affects a tremendous loss in milk yield over a long period of time, but is invisible to the eye. It is not uncommon to find that nearly 40 per cent of an infected herd have this more subtle form of mastitis – resulting in reduced milk averages of up to eight per cent.
The rate of udder infection is directly related to the number of mastitis-causing bacteria on the teat end.
- Contagious micro-organisms are spread from the udders of infected cows to healthy cows during milking.
- Environmental micro-organisms come from an unclean or unhygienic cow environment.
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Around 85 per cent of the total cost of clinical mastitis is due to decreased milk production and discarded milk. Milk loss due to clinical mastitis occurs because the treated cow’s milk has to be discarded since it is abnormal and it may have antibiotic contamination. With sub-clinical mastitis the losses are due to reduced production as a result of damaged tissue. Cows produce less milk than they are capable of producing.
Somatic cell
count |
Production loss
per cow |
| 100.000 |
3% |
210 kg |
| 200.000 |
6% |
420 kg |
| 300.000 |
7% |
490 kg |
| 400.000 |
8% |
560 kg |
| 500.000 |
9% |
630 kg |
| 600.000 |
10% |
700 kg |
| 700.000 |
11% |
770 kg |
| 1.000.000 |
12% |
870 kg |
It is therefore more important to reduce the incidence of clinical mastitis than to try and reduce the costs associated with treating it.
It is obviously more cost-efficient to reduce the incidence of mastitis in your herd, than to fight its presence in individual cows with treatment or culling. Cows with a somatic cell count above 250 000 cells/ml should be separated or milked last in the milking order. Always remember to contact your udder health consultant (advisor or veterinarian) according to normal routines and always follow the DeLaval milking routine – the twelve golden rules.
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