Recenti sviluppi tecnologici dei sistemi che utilizzano la conducibilità elettrica del latte per il monitoraggio dello stato di salute delle capre=Recent technological developments of systems that use the electrical conductivity of milk to monitor the health status of goats

In ruminants, infections by pathogenic microorganisms can be the origin of mastitis and they can affect both yields and quality of milk. The health status of mammary glands can be investigated through standardized laboratory analyses such as bacteriological analyses and the somatic cells count. These analyses need their relative times to be performed. For this reason, researchers have studied new markers and indexes able to detect, early and directly at the farm, the presence of udder pathologies with a specific focus on sub-clinical cases. In dairy cows, the electrical conductivity of milk has been the most studied parameter. In dairy goats, only recently the same trend has been observed although similar advantages, in terms of udder health, could be reached when the monitoring of the herd is performed. In this review, we present a detailed description of which is the current knowledge of this parameter and which is its detection characteristic when applied to milk from dairy goats in order to identify mastitis cases. The results of this review show that significant correlations between the mean values of electrical conductivity and the health status of mammary glands have been reported by many authors. Furthermore, different algorithms based on univariate or multivariate models have been tested with useful sensitivities and specificities. Therefore, this parameter can be considered as a tool to improve the monitoring of the mammary health status, also for dairy goats. However, the knowledge of the relationship between this parameter and the presence of mammary gland' pathologies should be improved. Furthermore, technological aspects related to the milking systems should be taken into account. In fact new sensors, able to measure this data on-line and for single gland, are necessary if the target is to use this technology in milking machines with performances comparable with those obtained with dairy cows.