According to Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) live statistics, the average national somatic cell count (SCC) this week is 186,000 cells/ml, which is similar to 184,000 cells/ml this time last year, but well up from 160,000 cells/ml for the same week in 2024.

From the sample of herds recorded during the last 10 days (which included 136,000 cows), only 58% of herds were on average below 200,000 cells/ml.

To manage SCC at this time of year, the most valuable asset you can have on-farm is an up-to-date milk recording.

It’s the most cost-effective way to identify problem cows in the herd, as a small number of high-SCC cows can have a significant effect on bulk tank SCC.

Farms should have four milk recordings completed at this stage this year and these reports build a picture of each cow's long-term SCC trends.

Categories

According to CellCheck programme manager at Animal Health Ireland Ryan Duffy, all cows fall into one of four categories at this stage: healthy (green), recently cured (blue), recently Infected (orange) and persistently infected (red).

Persistently infected cows with multiple high SCC records, with multiple quarters affected, or even with repeated cases of clinical mastitis, should now be considered for culling.

There is a very real danger that, as weather changes and cows are partially housed to build grass supplies, these cows become a major source of contagious mastitis (invisible high SCC) and act as a reservoir of infection for their herd mates, both this autumn and into subsequent lactations.

Culling cows with chronic infections helps protect the healthy, young cows which are the future of the herd.

Case recording

To help make the decision on what cows to cull, recording mastitis (and lameness) cases on the farm is one of the most important but overlooked ways to improve herd health, milk production and farm profitability.

By simply recording every case as it happens in a pocket notebook or on an app, and inputting the data to ICBF, farmers can make better culling decisions this autumn and identify problem cows faster.

Without such records, persistently infected cows which have been treated multiple times can go unnoticed, negatively impacting herd performance, animal health costs and longer-term herd health.

At the same time, those records will be invaluable to breed replacements from the healthiest cows and improve national genetic evaluations to help identify AI sires that reduce mastitis in the future.

While herd cell count problems are seldom solved by culling alone, good parlour and collecting yard hygiene, adequate provision of clean cubicles and a properly functioning milking machine can all play a part in preventing new infections to minimise the number of cows at the top of the high cell count list.