Detection of clinical mastitis in automatic milking systems.

The objective of this paper was to determine state-of-the-art ability of AMS to detect abnormal milk or clinical mastitis. Five different models of AMS were tested in six herds and sampled for 13 to 48 hours to find at least 10 cow milkings with abnormal milk and 50 cow milkings with normal milk. Due to the short sampling periods, the CMT-score of the foremilk was used to identify and support classification of abnormal and normal milk. Cows and quarters with a CMT-score >3 and no clots on a 0.1 mm filter were omitted from the calculations.