Abstract: To investigate the importance of dairy cow hygiene for management, the objective of this research was to determine the relationship between hygiene scores and daily milk yield as well as somatic cell score(SCS), and also the relationship between thigh and rear udder hygiene scores.The hygiene scores of thigh and rear udder were collected from 472 lactating cows in 3 Holstein dairy farms in Henan province, and dairy herd improvement(DHI) data for July, 2014 was also collected.After correcting the influence of fixed effects including lactating stage and dairy-parity, the effects of thigh and rear udder hygiene scores on daily milk yield and SCS were analyzed using SAS 9.1 with general linear model(GLM) procedure.The results showed that thigh and rear udder hygiene scores had no significant effect on average daily milk yield and SCS(P>0.05).For average daily milk yield, the regression coefficients of thigh and rear udder hygiene scores were-0.14 and-0.02, respectively.This meaned if thigh and rear udder hygiene scores increased 1 score, average daily milk yield of each cow would decrease 0.14 and 0.02 kg, respectively.For SCS, when thigh hygiene score ≥ 4, the proportion of cows with SCS ≥ 5 increased extremely significantly(P<0.01);when rear udder hygiene score ≥ 3, the proportion of cow with SCS ≥ 5 tended to increase(P=0.0546).Significant test for correlation and correlation coefficient estimation results showed that, there was a extremely significantly positive correlation discovered between thigh and rear udder hygiene scores(P<0.01).Therefore, hygiene scores was not only a management indicator, also could help understand udder health condition, which was beneficial for management.

Key words: thigh hygiene score; rear udder hygiene score; milk yield; SCS