Evaluation of the udder health status in subclinical mastitis affected dairy cows through bacteriological culture, somatic cell count and thermographic imaging

Abstract

Subclinical mastitis in dairy cows is a big economic loss for farmers. The monitoring of subclinical mastitis is usually performed through Somatic Cell Count (SCC) in farm but there is the need of new diagnostic systems able to quickly identify cows affected by subclinical infections of the udder. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential application of thermographic imaging compared to SCC and bacteriological culture for infection detection in cow affected by subclinical mastitis and possibly to discriminate between different pathogens. In this study we evaluated the udder health status of 98 Holstein Friesian dairy cows with high SCC in 4 farms. From each cow a sample of milk was collected from all the functional quarters and submitted to bacteriological culture, SCC and Mycoplasma spp. culture. A thermographic image was taken from each functional udder quarter and nipple. Pearson's correlations and Analysis of Variance were performed in order to evaluate the different diagnostic techniques. The most frequent pathogen isolated was Staphylococcus aureus followed by Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CNS), Streptococcus uberis, Streptococcus agalactiae and others. The Somatic Cell Score (SCS) was able to discriminate (p<0.05) cows positive for a pathogen from cows negative at the bacteriological culture except for cows with infection caused by CNS. Infrared thermography was correlated to SCS (p<0.05) but was not able to discriminate between positive and negative cows. Thermographic imaging seems to be promising in evaluating the inflammation status of cows affected by subclinical mastitis but seems to have a poor diagnostic value.

Effects of udder infections with Staphylococcus xylosus and Staphylococcus warneri on the composition and physicochemical changes in cows milk

“…An increase in the number of pathogenic bacteria in milk is accompanied by a higher somatic cell count, which is considered as a determinant of cow mammary gland health (Harmon 2001, Santos et al 2004, Lidiane et al 2012, Bortolami et al 2015. These results are consistent with those obtained in our study.…”

Development of a software algorithm working with infrared images and useful for the early detection of mastitis in dairy cows

“…When a dairy cow has a mastitis, some clinical signs can be recorded. Since a mastitis is always related to a local inflammation, an increase of the udder surface skin temperature (USST) and/or a greater animal' basal temperature can be observed and detected without any contact by infrared thermography (IRT) [7][8][9].…”

Prevalence of Sub-Clinical Mastitis in Cattle and Effect on Milk Quality

“…The estimation of milk pH is aberrantly an indicator for milk quality. The change in electrolyte composition of milk decides the pH, which depends on udder health (Bortolami et al, 2015). The enumeration of Somatic Cell Count is a standard test for diagnosing SCM and also predicts the health of mammary gland and bacteriological status.…”