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Article: Somatic Cell Count Distributions During Lactation Predict Clinical Mastitis
- Article from:
- Journal of Dairy Science
- Article date:
- May 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright American Dairy Science Association May 2004. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSTRACT
This research investigated somatic cell count (SCC) records during lactation, with the purpose of identifying distribution characteristics (mean and measures of variation) that were most closely associated with clinical mastitis. Three separate data sets were used, one containing quarter SCC (n = 1444) and two containing cow SCC (n = 933 and 11,825). Clinical mastitis was defined as a binary outcome, present or absent, for each lactation, and SCC were log (base 10) transformed. A generalized linear mixed model within a Bayesian framework was used for analysis. Parameters were estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo with Gibbs sampling. Results from the 3 data sets were similar. ...