Table 5.

Descriptive statistics and means comparison of ocular and nasal discharge scores for 82 spring-calving, pasture-based farms in southern Ireland during grazing (VISIT1) and when housed (VISIT2) in the 2019–2020 season¹

	Discharge score2
	0	1	2	3
Ocular discharge
Grazing
Mean %	53.6	45	1.4	0
SEM	3.61	3.51	0.25	0.03
Min	4.4	0	0	0
Max	100	93.5	14.1	2
Median	46.8	51.7	0	0
Lower 95% CI	46.4	38	0.9	0
Upper 95% CI	60.8	52	1.9	0.1
Housed
Mean %	53.5	45.2	1.2	0.1
SEM	2.31	2.21	0.27	0.08
Min	6	6.5	0	0
Max	93.6	92	11.4	4.9
Median	54.9	43.8	0	0
Lower 95% CI	48.9	40.8	0.6	0
Upper 95% CI	58.1	49.6	1.7	0.3
P-value3 (grazing vs. housed)	1.0‡	1.0‡	1.0‡	1.0‡
Nasal discharge
Grazing
Mean %	70	23.1	6.2	0.7
SEM	1.86	1.53	0.62	0.18
Min	14.5	0	0	0
Max	98.3	74.2	26.7	10.3
Median	72.3	21.2	4.4	0
Lower 95% CI	66.3	20.1	5	0.3
Upper 95% CI	73.7	26.2	7.5	1
Housed
Mean %	64.7	30.6	4.4	0.4
SEM	2.23	1.85	0.65	0.12
Min	11.4	1.9	0	0
Max	98.2	67.1	31	6.1
Median	64.4	31	2.8	0
Lower 95% CI	60.2	26.9	3.1	0.1
Upper 95% CI	69.1	34.3	5.7	0.6
P-value3 (grazing vs. housed)	0.33†	0.02†	0.03‡	0.70‡

¹Mean of 54 cows/farm (range: 33 to 76 cows/farm) scored at VISIT1 and 52 cows/farm (range: 31 to 72 cows/farm) scored at VISIT2.

²Ocular discharge score: 0) normal, 1) small amount of discharge, 2) moderate discharge, and 3) heavy discharge; nasal discharge score: 0) normal serous discharge, 1) small amount of cloudy discharge, 2) bilateral, cloudy, or excessive mucous discharge, and 3) copious bilateral mucopurulent discharge.

³Bonferroni-corrected P-value for multiple comparisons of mean differences between VISIT1 and VISIT 2 (significant difference at P < 0.05). Tests were either paired t-tests for normally distributed variables (†) or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for non-normally distributed variables (‡).