| survey of mastitis control practices, milking machine function and maintenance, and cow environmental conditions was conducted with 406 dairy producers on the Michigan Dairy Herd Improvement-Somatic Cell Counting program. These survey data in conjunction with Dairy Herd Improvement production data were used to develop a model estimating the marginal value products of mastitis control practices. Lost milk production associated with increased somatic cell counts was calculated for each herd. Mastitis control practices, milking machine function and maintenance, and cow environmental conditions were used as independent variables in an analysis of covariance model with lost milk production as the dependent variable.;Dairy herd management practices associated with increased production from lower somatic cell counts were post milking teat dipping, type of milking cow bedding, summer calving location, type of regulator, and use of alternating pulsation. Sanitizer in the wash water was associated with a decrease in production. Management practices that have previously been shown to be economical, but were not found to be economical in this study were dry cow therapy and single use paper towels for drying teats before attaching the milking unit.;The concept of restricted first order stochastic dominance was developed. This technique is essentially an analysis which calculates the point at which the cumulative distributions (of say profit) cross and restricts the underlying assumed utility function such that there is no crossing of the cumulative distributions over the remainder of the examined interval. Using this technique it was found that chlorhexidine teat dips, which resulted in higher mean profits but also higher variance of profits, were preferred to iodine teat dips. The mean profit associated with use of chlorhexidine dips was... |
