International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences

ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 2 Number 9 (2013) pp. 98-102

Somatic cell count of bovine bucket milk: a study from Turkey

Ayse Keskin and Savas Atasever*

Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ondokuz, Mayis, 55139- Samsun, Turkey *Corresponding author e-mail: satasev@omu.edu.tr

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to determine the effects of some factors on somatic cell count (SCC) in bucket milk samples in Samsun province, Turkey. Raw milk samples and questionnaires collected from three different selling points between April 2011 and January 2012 were used as the investigation materials. The SCC values were determined by direct microscopic method and the data were transformed to log10 base to obtain homogeneity. One-way ANOVA was used to detect the changes in SCC by herd size (HS), location of bazaar (LB), location of farm (LF) and education level of dairy owner (EL). Also, changes in SCC by season (S) were evaluated using Kruskal Wallis test for variance analysis and Mann-Whitney U test was used for detection of group differences. While no significant differences were found in logSCC means by EL and HS groups, in S evaluation, logSCC means of summer and autums groups were higher (P<0.001) than those evaluated in the other S groups. Besides, effect of LB on logSCC was statistically significant (P<0.05). Finally, the present study clearly shows that unpacked cow milk samples sold in Samsun province include marked risks by SCC and this negatively case should be removed applying more focus on storage and marketing conditions.

Keywords

Somatic cell count; Milk quality; dairy; unpacked milk.