What is Somatic cell count & how it affects the milk quality
Early twentieth century, dairy farmers needed a way to measure milk quality. Dairy farmers could not improve the quality of care for their cows if they didn’t have an effective measurement to determine positive and negative changes for improving milk quality.
Counting the number of cells in milk became the imperative to measure milk quality and was called somatic cell count, SCC.
Somatic is defined as being related to the body. Somatic cell count can be translated to literally mean “bodily cell count” or the number of cells in milk.
The SCC is quantified as the number of cells per ml of milk. In general terms:
- An individual cow SCC of 100,000 or less indicates an ‘uninfected’ cow, where there are no significant production losses due to subclinical mastitis.
- A threshold SCC of 200,000 would determine whether a cow is infected with mastitis. Cows with a result of greater than 200,000 are highly likely to be infected on at least one quarter.
- Cows infected with significant pathogens have an SCC of 300,000 or greater.
At Mr. Milk, – Mittal Happy Cows Dairy Farms, our somatic cell count is way lesser than the recommended range! This ensures farm-fresh purest A2 Desi Cow Milk delivered at your doorstep.
Basically, somatic cell count, SCC, indicates milk quality. Lower the SCC, higher the milk quality & vice versa. The SCC shows the amount of white blood cells that are present in milk. A higher presence of white blood cells means the cow is sending more cells to her udder to guard or fight off invading micro-organisms.
Essentially, a lower SCC indicates better animal health, as somatic cells originate only from inside the animal’s udder. SCC monitoring is important because as the number of somatic cells increases, milk yield is likely to fall, primarily due to the damage to milk-producing tissue in the udder. It could be the cause of low immunity of the cow, or any infection caught by her. Hence, it is really important to have SCC of the milk you are drinking is very less & within the range. Since high SCC milk is not recommended for human consumption.
Lastly,
Don’t be grossed out that the white blood cells are into the milk. Remember SCC is just a measurement tool used by dairy farmers to indicate milk quality and udder health. The goal of the dairy owner is to reduce the cow’s exposure to stress and bacteria. SCC shows him how he is doing.
White blood cells are in all animal products. Meat has white blood cells in it because there’s blood, and white blood cells are in blood. You don’t know about it because it’s not measured in meat. There are other methods to measure quality. It’s nothing to be grossed out about.
Thanks for reading the article till the end & hope we brought joy & peace to you by bringing you the best A2 Desi Cow Milk in town by Mr Milk, which guarantees & vouches for its purity & comes as it is, directly from mother nature.