Udder health is full of jargon and acronyms. We love it.
- Mastitis– inflammation of the udder. 99% of the time this is due to an infection of the udder with one of the common mastitis bacteria.
- SCC- somatic cell count. Somatic means body, so somatic cell count is just the number of body cells in the milk. These are mostly white blood cells which are needed to keep the bacteria at bay. There are a few epithelial cells which are the cells that line the milk producing glands and ducts, these slough off just like skin cells. Generally if the SCC is high then there are bacteria in the udder trying to cause a problem and the white blood cells have been sent in to try and get rid of them. If the SCC is high for more than 3 tests then the bacteria have set up a chronic infection. We measure individual cow SCC and bulk tank SCC.
- TBC- total bacterial count. This is generally an indication of the cleanliness of the milking procedure and is related to how clean the cows teats are when they are milked, how well the machine is cleaned after milking and how quickly the milk is cooled in the bulk tank. It is very rarely linked to mastitis or udder infection.
- DCT– dry cow therapy. Intra-mammary tube of antibiotics that is used at the time of drying off cows to prevent bacterial infections during the dry period. It can sometimes treat a chronic infection. It is long acting, most of them last at least 30 days.
- LCT-lactating cow therapy. Intra-mammary tube of antibiotics that is used when you have a case of clinical mastitis. It is used to treat the clinical mastitis. It is short acting and shouldn’t last more than 48 hours in the milk.