title: Optimally achieving milk bulk tank somatic cell count thresholds.
abstract: High somatic cell count in milk leads to reduced shelf life in fluid milk and lower processed yields in manufactured dairy products. As a result, farmers are often penalized for high bulk tank somatic cell count or paid a premium for low bulk tank somatic cell count. Many countries also require all milk from a farm to be lower than a specified regulated somatic cell count. Thus, farms often cull cows that have high somatic cell count to meet somatic cell count thresholds. Rather than naïvely cull the highest somatic cell count cows, a mathematical programming model was developed that determines the cows to be culled from the herd by maximizing the net present value of the herd, subject to meeting any specified bulk tank somatic cell count level. The model was applied to test-day cows on 2 New York State dairy farms. Results showed that the net present value of the herd was increased by using the model to meet the somatic cell count restriction compared with naïvely culling the highest somatic cell count cows. Implementation of the model would be straightforward in dairy management decision software.
authors.affiliation: Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell College of Business, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.
authors.forename: Jason A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Troendle
authors.affiliation: Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell College of Business, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. Electronic address: lwt1@cornell.edu.
authors.forename: Loren W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Tauer
authors.affiliation: Section of Epidemiology, Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.
authors.forename: Yrjo T
authors.initials: YT
authors.lastname: Gröhn
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D002452:Cell Count / Q000662:veterinary; D003612:Dairying / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D008892:Milk / Q000166:cytology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009518:New York
keywords: bulk tank somatic cell count; culling; mathematical model; shelf life