Dairy herd management scoring system applied to herds with different size and characteristics

Assessing herd management is an important part of any herd health programme and scoring systems based on questionnaires showed to be useful to identify the critical points and to focus the preventive measures. The results of a field study on applying a questionnaire for risk assessment of intramammary infections and subclinical mastitis in an area characterized by a large variability of herd size and management were reported. Fifty-five dairy herds in Northern Italy were included in this study. In each herd, a trained practitioner interviewed the farmer using a questionnaire on herd management, at the same time quarter milk samples were taken from lactating cows. For each area of interest (heifer housing, lactating cow housing, dry cow housing, calving management, milking management and therapy management) scores obtained from questionnaire analysis were classified in three or four classes to allow the assessment in herdswith different combination of management systems. The results of this study confirm that questionnaires are a powerful tool to assess herd management. Moreover, the use of scores and their grouping in classes allow analysing the relationship between herd management and udder health, even when there are large differences among herds.