The differences in milking parameters of dairy cows comparing the day of mastitis onset with period before mastitis

Abstract

Good udder health is one of the main goals in dairy farming worldwide. Mastitis is endemic on dairy farms and has economic consequences. Several methods are available for the detection of mastitis and with an automatic milking system (AMS) there is a lot of data available about milking parameters of dairy cows. The aim of this study was to investigate if there is a difference in milking parameters of dairy cows, when comparing these parameters on the day of mastitis onset with the parameters from a period before the onset of mastitis. Data for this research was obtained at one Dutch dairy Lely test farm with 240 cows, crossbred Holstein, Montbéliarde and Red Viking, between July 2018 and February 2019. The cows were housed in deep litter housing filled with straw and were milked by an AMS (Lely Astronaut A5, Lely Industries N.V., Maassluis, the Netherlands). A mastitis quarter was defined as a cow having two mastitis attentions in consecutive milkings in the same quarter. There were 77 cows with a mastitis quarter during the study period. Milking data of the milkings three weeks before the mastitis detection divided in four periods were compared with data from the day of mastitis. Milk time, milking interval, maximum milk speed and somatic cell count (SCC) were expressed at cow level. Mastitis attentions, colour alert, milk flow profiles, dead milking time, electrical conductivity (EC) and milk yield were recorded at quarter level whereas milk yield was available at both cow and quarter level. There were no significant differences between mastitis day and four periods before mastitis for total milk time, maximum milk speed and dead milk time. Milk interval, SCC and EC increased until mastitis day and show significant differences between mastitis day and four periods before mastitis. There were more colour alerts and abnormal milk flow profiles seen in the period four days before mastitis compared to period three weeks until five days before mastitis. Udder milk yield and quarter milk yield decrease before mastitis was detected. Milk interval, quarter milk yield an EC show no significant difference comparing four days before mastitis with the mastitis day.