FIELD EVALUATION OF AN OPTICAL SOMATIC CELL COUNTER FOR MILK

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Abstract
The Technicon Optical Somatic Cell Counter (OSCC) was studied for its utility in determining the somatic cell concentration in raw milk. Over the range of 30,000 to 1,600,000 cells per milliliter, dilutions of a milk sample or a stabilized turkey erythrocyte standard elicited a smooth but slightly curvilinear instrument response. Thirty milk samples of cell concentration clustering closely around 1,500,000 cells per milliliter were analyzed in triplicate. From an analysis of variance of the uncorrected instrument readout we computed an LSD.01 of 1.48 major chart scale divisions, which is a sensitivity of 2.0% at 1,500,000 cells per milliliter. Determinations were made on bulk tank milks ranging from 100,000 to 1,600,000 cells per milliliter. Chart peak values and Direct Microscopic Somatic Cell Counts (DMSCC) were highly correlated (0.96) when operating at either 30 or 60 samples per hour. Apparent inadequacies of the turkey erythrocyte calibration system may account for the discrepancy between the slope of the calibration curve and the regression lines. The discrepancy was much greater at the faster sampling rate. In a comparison of split samples of milk by both OSCC and DMSCC in three laboratories, the OSCC averaged 20% higher than the DMSCC counts but yielded a much lower standard deviation.

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