الفهرس 
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Abstract
This study was carried out at Mehallet Mousa Experimental Station. The farm is belonging to the Animal Production Research Institute, APRI. The experimental work was conducted during the period from April 2002 to May 2003. Total number of 276 lactating buffaloes throughout the experimental period were used 169 buffaloes were milked by hand whereas, 107 were milked by machine. The udder of each buffalo cow was regularly inspected to detect the incidence of clinical mastitis. The recorded data for each experimental animal were included the animal age, parity, name of the milkier and reproductive stage. In addition, data concerning daily milk yield, total milk yield, days in milk and length of dry period. The total number of test day records considered in the present study was 1091 records. The overall means of udder height, length, width, circumference and depth were 70.70, 53.89, 39.07, 111.12 and 12.86 cm, respectively. The overall mean of teat length and circumference (TCR) were 7.50 and 3.31 cm, respectively. The overall means of distances between teats in udder of buffaloes were 13.77, 7.77, 8.64 and 8.15 cm. for the front, left, rear and right teats, respectively. The udder decreased in width while increased in its udder circumference and udder height with machine milking system in comparison with hand milking. Differences in TCR between HM and MM systems were insignificant, whereas TL was significantly greater in MM than in HM system resulted in significantly reduced distances between teats when compared with hand milking system. Averages of Somatic cell count SCC ranged between 87.97119.8 thousands cell/ml. The minimum values of SCC were in the 1st lactation period whereas the maximum value recorded was in the 9th lactation period. Differences in SCC between parities were significant. Buffaloes that milked by hand showed lower estimates of SCC and DMY than those of buffaloes milked by machine. Differences in SCC due to system of milking were insignificant whereas, differences in DMY or TMY were highly significant. Fifty buffalo cows out of 276 cows (18.1%) were sub clinically infected (SCI) with mastitis. The percentages of SCI cases in machine milking and hand milking buffaloes were 21.5% and 16%, respectively. SCC in milk of SCI buffaloes were 7.86, 4.98 and 6.48 times that of non infected animals in MM, HM and overall experimental animals, respectively.