| Mastitis is the most frequent and costly infectious disease of dairy cows throughout the world. Mastitis causes decreased milk production, reduced milk quality, decreased cheese yield, increased the cost of treatment, increased labor, and increased culling. Mastitis in the United States causes an estimated loss exceeding ;The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate milking management and teat related risk factors that predispose the cows to develop mastitis. Chapter I is a comprehensive literature review about mastitis and some anatomical and farm management risk factors for this disease. Chapter II contains a study about pre- and post-milking anatomical characteristics of teats and their associations with risk of clinical mastitis. Chapter III covers the associations of anatomical characteristics of the teats with quarter level somatic cell counts. Chapter IV presents the results of an experiment conducted to evaluate anatomical characteristics of teats and pre-milking bacterial counts of teat skin for cows exposed to different type of beddings. |
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