Intramammary infections in primiparous Holsteins: heritabilities and comparisons of bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency carriers and noncarriers.

The objective of this study was to determine the impact of bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency on intramammary infection (IMI) in Holstein cows at first calving. Quarter milk samples were collected between 3 d prepartum and 4 d postpartum from 756 Holstein cows in first lactation. These samples were frozen and subsequently cultured using National Mastitis Council recommendations. Sixty-eight carriers of bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency were identified (9.0% of cows) from an additional milk sampling collected in early lactation. Binary variables (infected or uninfected) for each quarter were defined as dependent variables to evaluate IMI incidence from all bacterial species and major species groups: coliforms, coagulase-negative staphylococci, and streptococci other than Streptococcus agalactiae. The model included herd-season of calving, days in milk when samples were collected, age at calving, quarter, cow (random effect), and bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency. Sire was included as a random effect (instead of cow), and bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency was dropped from the model to estimate heritabilities. Heritabilities for IMI incidence from the various groups of organisms ranged from 0.02 to 0.66 (0.21 from all bacterial species). No differences were observed between carriers of bovine leukocyte adhesion deficiency and homozygous normal noncarriers for IMI from coliform, coagulase-negative staphylococci, streptococci other than Streptococcus agalactiae, or all bacterial species combined.