Impact of somatic cell count and lameness on the production and composition of ewe's milk

Abstract

High somatic cell count (SCC) in milk and lameness are two very serious problems on the farms. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of lameness, SCC, month and order of entry into the milking parlour on the milk production and its composition. The relationship between lameness and SCC and their impact on the order of entry was also evaluated. The experiment was carried out at the farm, located in northern Slovakia. The farm keeps sheep crossbred of Improved Valachian and Lacaune. Milking was performed two times a day in milking parlor 1x24. Samples of milk were taken once a month by evening milking: May, July. In May, individual milk samples were taken from 214 random sampling ewes with milk yield minimum 300 mL per milking. In July, only from selected ewes in May, the milk samples, milk yield and lameness were recorded. Order of ewes entry into the milking parlour in milking row (one milking row is 24 animals) was recorded in both months. In total 23 milking rows were recorded. Ewes was divided by lameness (non-lame, slightly lame, strong lame), by SCC (A1 = to 2x10 5 cells, A2 = from 2x10 5 to 4x10 5 cells, A3 = from 4x10 5 to 7x10 5 cells, A4 = from 7x10 5 to 10x10 5 cells, A5 = over 10x10 5 cells.mL -1 ) and by the order of entry of ewes into the milking parlour (in first group of ewes were milked in 1-5 rows, second 6-11, third 12-17, fourth 18-23 ones). No effect of lameness was found out on milk yield. Lameness in July affected the order of entry into milking parlour in July as compared with their order of entry recorded in May. The strong lame ewes entered 4.19 ±1.07 milking rows later in July than in May. Only 11.2% and 4.2% of milk samples were found out in a group with SCC >10x10 5 cells.mL -1 during May and July respectively. In both months, the production of lactose was lower in groups with higher SCC. Ewes entering into the milking parlour earlier had higher SCC as ewes entering into milking parlour later in July but no effect was seen in May. In conclusion the studies under practical conditions deserve continuous research attention to identify risk factors of management affecting lameness and udder health for further improvement of sheep breeding.

The impact of somatic cell count on milk yield and composition

“…In observed months we found out significant decrease content of lactose in SCC group with SCC ≥1,000 × 10 3 cells/ml (4.4 ±0.04%) in compared to SCC group with low SCC <200 × 10 3 cells/ml (4.8 ±0.03%) and SCC group with SCC ≥200 <400 × 10 3 cells/ml (4.7 ±0.03%) (P <0.001). Lower lactose content in milk with high SCC was recorded in study published by Baranovič et al (2018). Also we detected significant impact of months of observation on decline content of lactose (P <0.001) ( Table 1).…”

“…Mastitis decreased milk yield up to 25% (Cuccuru et al, 2011). Also our previous study showed negative effect of somatic cells counts (SCC) on milk yield and its composition (Margetín et al, 2013;Baranovič et al, 2018;Tančin et al, 2017a).…”

Food safety and food quality. Proceedings of the scientific papers

“…), pri obsahu bielkovín bol pozorovaný signifikantný rozdiel aj medzi 2. a poslednou obrátkou. Nakoľko zvieratá chované na tejto farme mali počas našich meraní veľmi nízky PSB a množstvo zvierat s PSB vyšším ako 300 000 buniek/mL bolo nízke, zvieratá boli rozdelené do skupín podľa PSB (Tabuľka 3) prísnejšie ako v iných štúdiách (Martí de Olives et al, 2015; Baranovič et al, 2018;Sutera et al, 2018). Napriek tomu, sa nezistili žiadne signifikantné rozdiely medzi hodnotenými skupinami v zložení mlieka a ani v jeho množstve.…”