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Milk Somatic Cell Count in Buffaloes and its Relation to Intramammary Infections, Parity, and Stage of Lactation
Arya, K.; Bansal, B. K.; Gupta, D...
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Objectives: Milk somatic cell count (SCC) is a key component of regulations for milk quality and is an indicator of udder health in dairy animals. The present study determines the physiological level of milk SCC in buffaloes and explores its relation to quarter infection, parity, and stage of lactation.
Materials and Methods: The study was conducted in two parts. The first part of the study determined the physiological levels and effect of quarter infection and parity on the milk SCC in buffaloes. In this, the quarter foremilk (QFM) and udder composite milk samples from ninety-one buffaloes of different parities were analyzed for bacteriology (Microbial Procedures of the National Mastitis Council) and SCC (using somatic cell counter SomaScope Smart, DELTA Instruments, The Netherland). The second part evaluated the effect of stage of lactation on the milk SCC. Here, 39 freshly calved buffaloes were enrolled and studied for quarter infection and milk SCC at four different stages of lactation viz., fresh calving (3-5 days of calving), early lactation (35-42 days), mid-lactation (120-135 days) and late lactation (210-225 days). The health status of quarters was defined as per International Dairy Federation criteria i.e. simultaneously considering the microbiology and SCC of QFM. The threshold value of QFM SCC was taken as ≤100×103 cells/ml for defining the healthy quarters The Data was stored in Microsoft Excel and analyzed by Chi-square test (Fisher's Exact Test), ANOVA with post HOC (Tuckey’s method), Spearman’s correlation, t-Test and Logistic regression with backward elimination using SAS version 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, USA). The level of significance was set at p < 0.05.
Results: The evaluation of quarter health in buffaloes under study revealed 7.99% specific subclinical mastitis, 11.57% nonspecific subclinical mastitis, and 7.71% latent infections. 72.73% of the quarters were found healthy. Animal wise, 20.88% of udders were positive for specific subclinical mastitis in at least one quarter. The average milk SCC in buffaloes was found 100×103 cells/ml (range 74-126) at the quarter level and 105×103 cells/ml (range 58-151) at udder level. The 77% of buffaloes had SCC ≤100×103 cells/ ml, with 7% showing >200×103 cells/ml. The milk SCC was found significantly (p<0.05) higher in the infected quarter (356×103 cells/ml) than in healthy quarters (52×103 cells/ml). The distribution of intra-mammary infections (IMI) to milk SCC showed 9.59%, 20.51% and 65.62% infections in quarters with QFM SCC of 0-100, 101-200 and > 200 ×103 cells/ml, respectively. The streptococci IMI resulted in highest milk SCC (mean 710×103 cells/ ml) followed by Staphylococcus aureus (464×103 cells/ml) and coagulase-negative staphylococci (224×103 cells/ml) as compared to 52×103 cell/ml of healthy uninfected quarters (p<0.01).The corynebacteria infections initiated no significant reaction (mean SCC 54×103 cells/ml). The milk SCC increased with the advancing parity; average cell counts being 168×103 cells/ml for 3-4th parity buffaloes as compared to 84×103 cells/ml for 2nd parity and 48×103 cells/ml for 1st parity animals (p<0.01). The milk SCC showed a significant positive correlation of 0.30 with the 305-day lactation milk yield (p< 0.01). The evaluation of milk SCC viz.-a-viz. stage of lactation revealed the average milk SCC as 118×103 cells/ ml at calving, which decreased to 69×103 cells/ml at 35-42 d (p<0.05), and then increased to 80×103 cells/ml in mid- and 94×103 cells/m in late- lactation. The occurrence of quarter infections was minimum (10.25%) in freshly calved animals, which increased to 21.15% in early lactation, 22.91% in mid-lactation and 31.03% in late lactation (Chi-square = 58.00, df = 03, p < 0.01).
Conclusions: Assessment of present results in buffaloes in terms of our similar studies in HF×Sahiwal crossbred cows under parallel dairy management exposes that buffaloes relatively harbor fewer quarter infections and possess lower milk SCC. Thus, the physiological threshold of milk SCC in buffa- loes probably may be defined at 100×103 cells/ml and considered pathological when >200×103 cells/ ml.
Keywords: Buffalo, Milk Somatic Cell Count, Intramammary Infection, Parity, Lactation.
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Affiliation of the authors at the time of publication
Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, India
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