The investigation on the relationship between dairy cow hygiene scores and intramammary infections

The “cow hygiene score” system is a management tool for assessment of cow’s body hygiene and cleaning of the barn. In this study, the correlation between body hygiene scores and intramammary infections (IMI), California Mastitis Test (CMT) and Somatic Cell Count (SCC) were evaluated in two different seasons. Hygiene scoring of 1096 dairy cows in 4 herds was performed on five body areas including: udder, rear legs, flanks and upper legs, abdomen, and tail head. After doing CMT, milk samples were taken from quarters with score 2 or more for microbiological culture. SCC data were taken in two consecutive months. The results of this study showed no significant differences between the median of all hygiene scores except for tail head that were significantly greater in high than low rainy seasons (p 0.05). There was no significant correlation between hygiene scores and the chance of positive bacterial culture (p 0.05), but a statistically significant relationship was found between udder hygiene score and isolation of environmental bacteria (p 0.05). There were no statistically significant differences between SCC or CMT and hygiene scores of all parts of the body and similarly between teat cleanliness score after premilking preparation and SCC in two consecutive months (p 0.05). Finally, it seems that udder hygiene scoring is an useful tool for predicting of intramammary infections caused by environmental bacteria.