Milk that is processed and sold as fluid milk will taste better for a longer period when the original source is high quality raw milk. High quality milk that is processed into cheese will provide a better cheese curd and more total cheese yield than poor quality milk. Mastitis Benchmarks D airymen need to establish a standard way to evaluate their mastitis situation and monitor it routinely to determine what trends may be occurring. Somatic cell data is readily available and can provide useful information in terms of spotting problems that may be occurring. There often is the observation in these herds that clinicals are the most damaging issue.
Every clinical episode is costly and the impact can be significant in the short term.
A sudden increase in clinicals needs to be viewed as an alarm that prompts all management programs to be questioned and changed as necessary. W eather conditions, housing and bedding conditions, milking equipment, milking procedures, dry cow treatment and management programs, addition of recently purchased cows are some of the factors that may be involved. A general benchmark for clinicals is less than 2.0 cases per 100 milking cows per month. In a 100-cow herd that would mean no more than 2 clinical cases each month. A nother benchmark may be the discard time for milk from treated cows.