Cell counts in sheep

I have often thought, when merrily putting in cull tags of lactating ewes with mastitis. But is there any reason why progeny of rams/ different bloodlines/ own breeding flock cannot be milk recorded to find out the SCC of the milk (also I'm sure the protein and butterfat levels would influence lamb growth rates too). It would be no more hassle than scanning for eye muscle and such.

And with figures about of 20% of the national flock being culled for mastitis, surely it would speed up progress? As with milking cows all in the same environment, hereditary high cell count cows are always the ones needing treatment. It does seem a tad silly that there is so much emphasis on muscle in ebvs, when in reality its only a few £ difference between a R grade and a E grade. Yet having a functional ewe with good locomotion and good udder ( plus prolificacy) is a lot more profitable if costing time and replacements. If you have ever looked through a dairy semen book a lot could be learnt.
 

W Sawday

Member
Location
Hay- On- Wye
Very much agree. It isn't to difficult to collect milk data for sheep. Either use a Californian milk test kit for on the spot mastitis assessment or pot some milk up and send it off to nml and get scc, fat and prot for about 85p/ pot. There is of course a value in the time spent milking ewes and collecting the data but it depends how much you value that data. It is very much feasible to develop a mastitis ebv as well.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
If, as normally happens with sheep, any that get mastitis are culled, everyone is already selecting hard against mastitis prone sheep. If they are removed from the gene pool with a trip to the abattoir, they don't get to breed many replacements.

If BF levels are effecting growth rates (as would shown to be the case in Trident Feeds trials years back), that would be reflected in the 8 week wt ebvs.

Personally, I would think getting a sample from every ewe without contamination would be anything but 'no more hassle than scanning'. I was involved in a Warwick Uni study into sheep mastitis a couple of years ago, where I collected samples from all sheep that got mastitis and from 20 or so that they wanted to investigate as well. It was a real PITA.
Presumably you'd take several samples at weekly/monthly intervals to get a representative sample? In dairy cows, the scc changes according to stage of lactation, so one sample wouldn't show much to base a genetic analysis on IMO.

I've never heard of 20% of the national flock, or any individual flock, being culled for mastitis btw.:eek:
 

bovine

Member
Location
North
A single milk sample is pretty meaningless.

We know that SCC, BF and protein vary thought the single milking, never mind the lactation - hence we gradually sample throughout the milking and multiple times throughout the lactation. A few squirts of high SCC cysternal milk tell us nothing. The value comes from repeated recordings.

I agree with @neilo cull affected sheep.
 

W Sawday

Member
Location
Hay- On- Wye
Surprisingly you don't need to repeat the tests that many times. I'm working on the genomics project in mastitis in texels and we collecting 2 sets of samples from each ewe, 2 years in a row. And that's enough to produce reliable phenotypes to create gebvs.
 

bovine

Member
Location
North
Surprisingly you don't need to repeat the tests that many times. I'm working on the genomics project in mastitis in texels and we collecting 2 sets of samples from each ewe, 2 years in a row. And that's enough to produce reliable phenotypes to create gebvs.
Interesting. How are you standardising it?

We know that as lactation goes on it cattle the risk of acquiring an IMI increases. The risk is clearly not the same grabbing at 2 random points in a cows lactation.
 

W Sawday

Member
Location
Hay- On- Wye
I can't speak for how it may be in cows so there are probably many differences. But we take samples at 4 weeks post lambing and at weaning. We also take a lot of udder scores and measurements which also gets fed into the equation.
 

W Sawday

Member
Location
Hay- On- Wye
I have often thought, when merrily putting in cull tags of lactating ewes with mastitis. But is there any reason why progeny of rams/ different bloodlines/ own breeding flock cannot be milk recorded to find out the SCC of the milk (also I'm sure the protein and butterfat levels would influence lamb growth rates too). It would be no more hassle than scanning for eye muscle and such.

And with figures about of 20% of the national flock being culled for mastitis, surely it would speed up progress? As with milking cows all in the same environment, hereditary high cell count cows are always the ones needing treatment. It does seem a tad silly that there is so much emphasis on muscle in ebvs, when in reality its only a few £ difference between a R grade and a E grade. Yet having a functional ewe with good locomotion and good udder ( plus prolificacy) is a lot more profitable if costing time and replacements. If you have ever looked through a dairy semen book a lot could be learnt.
I thought it was 7-12% being lost a year from mastitis? And that was from culling and deaths. Well, that was the paper I read- could be a different paper though. Still, 10% is still a lot imo.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
I thought it was 7-12% being lost a year from mastitis? And that was from culling and deaths. Well, that was the paper I read- could be a different paper though. Still, 10% is still a lot imo.

That makes me feel better about our mastitis level anyway, which always seems to be too many. 1 in 10 of the flock culled/dead because of mastitis in any one year does seems a lot.:scratchhead:
 

W Sawday

Member
Location
Hay- On- Wye
No it stated between 7% and 12% of the UK sheep population is lost due to mastitis. But this will be an estimation and therefore subjected to debate. Still, I agree, from its true then that is high!!!
 
For closed flocks who do basic recording. But a flying flock just buying sheep on sight from pens in market is a different ball game. Some of the sheep we have bought in the past have looked OK to begin with, but time they are out feeding their lambs turned out to be pretty tragic
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,286
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top