Are my lactating animals "udder healthy"?
A cow's udder that is producing milk with a cell content of ≤ 100,000 cells/ml is considered healthy. Higher cell concentrations are associated with reduced herd performance. In the new MLP report, the measure "udder healthy animals" will now be used to represent the proportion of animals in the herd that meet that threshold (≤ 100,000 cells/ ml). Dairy farms with good udder health should be achieving a figure of more than 60 percent*.
If the proportion of udder healthy animals is too low, or is a showing a tendency to decline, it is an indication that two important management actions need to be carried out: the cows or heifers that are the source of the high cell counts need to be treated, and care must be taken to minimize the risk of new infections.

Figures reveal the success of treatment strategies
Dr. Ute Phillip, the director of health and quality assurance at the Thuringian Association of Performance Testing in Livestock Breeding (TVL), says that in conjunction with data on detected udder disease problems, the new figures can be used to show how successful treatments regimes have been. “If you have problems, you can use our on-farm analysis of milk production procedures,” Phillip adds. "Faults that we identify in the milking routine can often be eliminated free of charge."

Dr. Joachim Kleen, a cattle veterinary specialist and consultant at Cow Consult in Uplengen-Jübberde (Niedersachsen) says the new monitoring represents an excellent opportunity to measure udder health and to guide management action. “The figures allow a sober consideration of the situation,” he adds. “If the figures are stable, even with short-term fluctuations, and if the proportion of healthy animals is in the target area, then everything is basically fine, but if the proportion of udder healthy animals falls, we must act."

Dr. Eva Zeiler, director of the Bavarian cattle monitoring project "Pro Health" at the State Institute for Agriculture in Grub, and a practicing vet, says that ideally 75% of the herd have a cell count of