Abstract
The major economic health problem of dairy cattle is mastitis which can affect 10 to 50% of cow-quarters. This health problem is difficult for many dairy farmers and health advisors to understand, diagnose and control. Without special laboratory testing, most mastitis is overlooked. Estimates of annual mastitis cast per cow vary from $50 to $200. For the nearly 9 million cows in the United States, annual loss to the dairy industry amounts to over one billion. A knowledge-based decision aid has been developed to evaluate mastitis data retrieved electronically from two of nine U. S. regional dairy records processing centers. Heuristic rules to diagnose herd mastitis problems were collected and incorporated into the system from various domain experts. This system information. It allows users to select mastitis control schemes with various degrees of aggressiveness and teaches commonly accepted mastitis control practices.
