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University of Rhode Island

Mastitis

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Full-Text Articles in Dairy Science

A Comparison Of Pyronin Y-Methyl Green Stain And Methylene Blue Stain For Somatic Cell Count In Sheep Milk, Emily Mirek, Stacey O’Donnell May 2007

A Comparison Of Pyronin Y-Methyl Green Stain And Methylene Blue Stain For Somatic Cell Count In Sheep Milk, Emily Mirek, Stacey O’Donnell

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Somatic cell count is a key method used to evaluate the quality of milk in today’s growing dairy sheep industry. Somatic cells are body cells, primarily the white blood cells, found in a milk sample. If an infection such as mastitis is present, the number of somatic cells in the milk increases (Gonzalo, et al. 1992). Producers routinely perform somatic cell counts on cow and goat milk. For dairy cattle in the United States, the somatic cell count can not exceed 750,000 cells per milliliter, for commercial milk. For dairy goats the accepted limit is 1,000,000 cells per mL of …