Ten Holstein cows were sprayed with one of two teat-disinfecting solutions, onecontaining iodine, and the other containing mainly fatty and lactic acids but no iodine. The cows were milked twice daily. A six month, double switch-back experimental design was employed which consisted of alternately applying iodine, fatty acid, and iodine disin-fectant treatments for two months each to the cows in group A while the group B cows concurrently received simultaneous alternate treatment of fatty acid, iodine, and fatty acid, also for two months each. Somatic cell counts (SCC) of individual cow were measured monthly by Fosomatic 360. Milk NAGase activity (NAG) was determined four times during the experiment using Nissan fluorometer. Both are used as indicators of udder health. The teat skin conditions, clinical signs of mastitis as well as general health status were observed usually bythe milkers. The means±SD of SCCs and NAG were 57. 4±2. 8× 1, 000/ml versus 56. 7±3. 0× 1, 000/ml and 3. 237±1. 711nmol/min/ml versus 3. 174± 1. 837nmol/min/ml for iodine and no io-dine solutions respectively. No significant differences (p>0.01) in both indicators werefound. However, the teat skin conditions of each cow were better after the non-iodineteat dip solution was applied. This suggests that the non-iodine teat dip solution is amore effective pre-milking teat disinfectant that also eliminates possible iodine contamina-tion of the milk.
View full abstract