Animal Health I.

This article presents abstracts of various papers related to animal health, that were presented during the symposium held on July 26, 2005, Cincinnati, Ohio, which was organized by the American Dairy Science Association, the American Society of Animal Science and the Canadian Society of Animal Science. One of the papers presented is "Lactate Dehydrogenase and N-acetyl-b-D-Glucosaminidase Activities in Bovine Milk As Measures of Clinical Mastitis," by M.G.G. Chagunda, T. Larsen, M. Bjerring and K.L. Ingvartsen. The activities of lactate dehydrogenase and N-acetyl-b-D- glucosaminidase and their relationship to somatic cell count was investigated in normal and mastitic bovine milk. A full dataset, consisting of records from Danish Holstein, Danish Red and Jersey cows on one research farm were utilized in the study. Another paper discussed is "Association Between Local Clinical Signs and Important Outcomes of Clinical Mastitis Episodes in Dairy Cattle," by J. Wenz, R. Ella, K. Whitman and F. Garry. Clinical mastitis is the most common infectious disease of dairy cattle and is responsible for significant economic losses. There are many local clinical signs associated with inflammatory changes of the mammary gland during bacterial infection.