Screening of animals for subclinical mastitis; a discriminate function analysis

Abstract

The study was aimed to construct a discriminate model to differentiate health status of the udder in dairy lactating Holstein cows. Though SCC is a single most reliable indicator of mastitis, a fine demarcation line to differentiate the healthy and subclinical animals based on SCC, rarely exist. The model included contributory factors such as log_SCC, stage of lactation, rainy season, stall hygiene score, udder hygiene score and milking method constructed and was found to demonstrate 89.2 per cent accuracy with p less than 0.001 and the Holstein functions at group centroids are -0.982 and 1.209 respectively for normal and mastitis infected animals. The model will facilitate 92.3 per cent of the cases to correctly classify for non-mastitis normal animals and 85.3 per cent to predict correctly as mastitis.