Thank you for the compliments, @Amy. Please reach out to me for more details about farm visits.

Great question! In general, most of the literature says somatic cell count is lowly heritable, meaning that the environment plays a greater role in the offspring's phenotype than parental genetics. However, there are some reports of genetic correlations indicating moderately strong relationships between somatic cell count and udder depth, udder length, teat angle, or teat width. Though the statistical significance between these relationships has varied across studies, putting some selection pressure on some of these traits could help reduce somatic cell count. And most of these traits want a "moderate" score; about a 45° teat angle from the udder, teats that are in moderate length, nothing too long or too short, and an udder in moderate size/depth so as to select for increased milk yield without the udder becoming too large or too low to the ground to make it difficult for lambs to suckle. In an average sheep flock, it's unlikely that there will be many extremes for these udder conformation traits, but if there are extreme ewes those may be the ones more prone to developing mastitis and to keep a close eye on.

Thank you Sonja. I appreciate hearing this.

Thanks Robert! I am glad you found it so useful.

Thank you Joshua!