Revista de salud animal y ciencias del comportamiento

Association of Somatic Cell Count with Milk yield and its Chemical Compositions the Egyptian Buffalo

Abstract

Ali El-Raghi*

The core of the present study is to investigate the effect of somatic cell count on milk yield and its gross chemical composition. The data set comprised from thirty milk record collected from thirty buffalo at the fifth month of lactation kept under field conditions among smallscale farmers in Tabanoha village, Dakahlia governorate, Egypt. The results of this research indicate that the overall means along with their standard deviations for milk yield, fat, protein, lactose, total solid and solid nonfat were 222.62± 73.64, 15.70 ± 4.98, 9.75 ± 3.33, 11.42 ± 4.18, 38.01 ± 12.08 and 22.37 ± 7.67, respectively. Somatic cell count exerted significant effect on milk yield and its various components with coefficient of determination (R2 ) about 23.5%, 22.9%, 22.1%, 17.4%, 23.3% and 21.2% for the yield of milk, fat, protein, lactose, total soiled and solids non-fat, respectively. A statistically significant positive correlation was observed between milk, fat, protein, total solid and solid nonfat with milk somatic cell count (0.358* , 0.492**, 0.360* , 0.420* and 0.349* , respectively), while non-significant effect was detected between lactose and milk yield (0.303). It could be concluded that some emphasis must be placed on milk somatic cell count due to its impact on milk yield and its chemical composition.