Abstract

ECHEVERRI ZULUAGA, José Julián; JARAMILLO, Manuel Guillermo  and  RESTREPO BETANCUR, Luis Fernando. Comparative evaluations of two diagnose methods for mastitis in a dairy herd from the Antioquia province. Rev. Lasallista Investig. [online]. 2010, vol.7, n.1, pp.49-57. ISSN 1794-4449.

Introduction. Mastitis is the disease that affects the most dairy herds worldwide, bringing the worst impact. All kinds of strategies have been implemented in order to reduce its sanitary and economic consequences. The high volume of milk production, the cows with many lactations and the lack of hygiene at the time of the milking, are some of the main causes for this disease. In its subclinical form mastitis causes losses in milk production and quality, but the animal's welfare is not affected. When the disease gets worse, it seriously affects the health of the animal and can cause a loss of quarters or even the necessity of a discard due to a lack of production or to a total malfunction of the mammary gland. The count of somatic cells (CCS) has been used as a method to determine the mammary gland's health degree. The measurement of CCS is a simple technique, but it requires some specialized equipment that is not usually available for the dairy cattle producers, so the CMT, or California Mastitis Test, has been accepted as a field technique useful to take, departing from its results, corrective measurements to reduce the presence of this disease in dairy cattle. Objective. To compare the efficiency of two diagnose methods in subclinical mastitis, in order to determine the mammary gland's infection degree. Materials and methods. The analysis was carried out by estimating the Spearman's correlation of the qualitative results in each method with the quantitative analysis of the CCS made in the laboratory, to 104 milk samples corresponding to the 4 quarters of 26 cows with unknown somatic cells levels. Results. The correlation for both treatments was significant, 42,9% for treatment 1 and 49% for treatment 2. According to these results, it is possible to conclude that neither treatment can explain, exactly, the sanitary level of the mammary gland, but, besides, there is no difference in using one or the other. Conclusion. CCS is the most important analysis.

Keywords : Mastitis diagnose; CCS; economic loss; CMT.

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