Mastitis prevention by selection of sires

Abstract

The investigation results mentioned led to the hypothesis: "Higher milk cell counts in the 1st lactation daughter groups indicate a higher susceptibility to mastitis and subsequently a higher mastitis prevalence with increasing age". The validity of this hypothesis has been investigated in the presented study by a simple scheme.

Older sires were selected for this purpose in order to establish the (different) predicting cell counts in their 1st lactation daughters - and - to examine quarter samples from respective older age groups for the prevalence of mastitis.