K-Shires, J and L or anyone else...SCC control

[born2run]

I've seen articles stating that the SCC goes up as the lactation ends. I've certainly seen this to be true on the herd I work with, so I believe it. Just curious if there's anything you can do to keep it in check or is this inevitable? How about early lactation (first 40 days)? I've never seen anything to support the records I see, but the same thing happens to some of them. I can see with the high influx on milk and higher protein TMR that this would have a tendency to occur, but short of treating is there anything that can be done to just keep it in check? Summers coming, and again I've usually seen the herd's overall SCC skyrocket. Why? These cows are housed in freestalls, shavings changed twice a week, good ventilation, adequate stalls for the amount of cows that are in there. Currently the SCC is good, under 200,000. I'd like to see it stay there for the sake of my paycheck.

 

[milkmaid]

Bumping it up for you...;-) Good question and I'd like to see an answer too.

 

[J and L]

SCC goes up at the end of lactation because there is less milk to "water out" the cell numbers. Older cows seem to produce a few more cells that younger ones-- maybe because they have been exposed to more over their lifetimes, and cell production isn't linear with milk production. It is there on its own scale.

I've come to believe that most elevated SCC's in early lactation are either from irritation caused by past problems or from the stress swelling and being bumped around puts on the udder. Anything that irritates the udder makes it try to "heal" itself. We used to culture cows with SCC's over 400 in the first month but usually didn't find anything on the older cows. Keep in mind that white cells are part of the protein in milk, so elevated SCC can mean higher protein.

As for summer SCC's, bugs grow much better in bedding, on teats, etc in the warm months, so cows are exposed to more of them. Not every cow becomes clinical when exposed but her cell count goes up as she fights the infection off on her own. I think individual counts spike and retreat much more often in summer and that skews the tank averages.

 

[born2run]

Thanks for the reply! Herd SCC is now just over 200,000...which of course means no bonus for us. They just dried of 16 cows, which I hope brings it back down. Makes sense about the rise and fall of the tank count, because I've seen that a lot lately. One day it can be 187,000, the day about 10,000 more than that.

 

[bigbull338]

there are a few ways you can control the scc.an we have used them with sucess.an they are as follows.dipp your milkers in bleach between every cow.an when your washing the cows for milking dry them with 1 ragg to a cow or paper towel.never use the ragg on more than than 1 cow.b/c if you do youll spread problems.we used abs udder gold to dipp cows teats after every milking.as well as poy suspect cows in the jugg.an culled all chronic cows.as well as culled the steph cows.b/c theres no cure for watery mastitis.