SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS DECEMBER, 1987 INFORMATION AND HERD HEALTH MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN TEXAS DAIRIES

Abstract for about 70 percent of the milk loss due to The dissemination of information by mastitis. Mastitis costs the average U.S. dairy extension agents on dairy management prac- herd the dollar equivalent of approximately tices used to control mastitis and the recep- 500 pounds of milk per cow per year in milk tion and use of that information by producers medicine costs, treatment time, and are investigated. Producers are surveyed to premature culling (Natzke). The greatest determine current practices used. The rela- potential for decreasing the effects of mastitis tionship between milk yield, somatic cell lies in the early detection and treatment of count, management practices, and producert, management practices, a producer clinical cases and in the reduction of the in-and production characteristics is estimated. cdence of sub-clcal mastitis through improved health and herd management pro-Subjective probabilities are elicited from "ex- proved health and herd management pro-perts, " extension agents, and producers con- grams (Natzke; Gilmore). A substantial part of cerning the impact and cost of various the economic benefit from improved mastitis management practices. Subjective marginal control is passed on to consumers through im-value products and marginal input costs are proved product quality (and lower milk prices computed and compared for the respondent where prices are free to vary). Therefore, con-groups. Stochastic dominance is used to rank sumers benefit from newly disseminated in-disupseminochaste c in minance is used to rank formati n and subsequent adoption of improvedthe relative importance of the practices as formation and subsequent adoptionofimproved perceived by the resp ents. mastitis control programs (Asby et al.