Healthy teat skin provides the best defence against all types of pathogens. Furthermore, smooth healthy teat skin is easier to clean and easier to keep clean compared with rough or damaged teat surfaces. The act of milking aggravates all types of teat lesions. Factors other than machine effects also cause or aggravate teat lesions, of course. Alternatively, lesions may result from incorrect or insufficient emollient in the teat-dip, or separation of chemicals in the dip.
Microscopic lesions can become infected and enlarged as a result of improper teat-dipping.
Undermilking causes bulk milk cell counts to rise because of the marked increase in the cell count of infected quarters. Furthermore, subclinical infections may flare to the clinical stage if cows are undermilked. If more milk can be hand-stripped consistently from left hind quarters, for example, then the problem is likely to be uneven distribution of the cluster weight between the udder quarters. The incidence of slipping or falling teatcups can be assessed by careful observation. The most common cause of frequent slippage is poor alignment of clusters in relation to the udder.