Measurement of milk somatic cell count (SCC) is often used to screen lactating dairy cows for mastitis. Many methods have been developed to rapidly measure SCC in milk from lactating cows but few validated tools are available to quantify SCC in secretions from nonlactating mammary glands. The objective was to quantify SCC in nonlactating secretions by direct microscopic examination and determine if these measures correlate with the SCC produced by a commercial SCC counter designed for lactating cows, the DeLaval Cell Counter (DCC). Mammary secretions (n = 90) collected from 6 dry, non-pregnant, Holstein cows (1 to 3 lactations; 53 to 64 d dry) were diluted 1:4 in PBS containing 2.2% BSA and used to make duplicate secretion smears for microscopic quantification and measured in duplicate by the DCC. Each smear was enumerated by 2 independent counters. Duplicate secretion smears produced a within-sample coefficient of variation of 12.8%. Average values were used for further evaluation. Mean microscopic SCC ranged from 1.56 to 131.0 × 10⁶ cells/mL (mean = 20.0 × 10⁶ cells/mL; SD = 22.4 × 10⁶ cells/mL). Secretion SCC enumerated by counter 1 (mean = 19.8 × 10⁶ cells/mL) were lower (P = 0.0045) than those produced by counter 2 (mean = 20.5 × 10⁶ cells/mL); but SCC were highly correlated (R² = 0. 970). Duplicate DCC SCC measures produced a within-sample coefficient of variation of 15.8% and mean DCC SCC ranged from 0.926 to 16.0 × 10⁶ cells/mL (mean = 6.16 × 10⁶ cells/mL; SD = 3.09 × 10⁶ cells/mL). When average DCC SCC were compared with counts produced by counter 1, counter 2, and their average using PROC CORR in SAS, respective Pearson Correlation Coefficients of 0.342, 0.321, and 0.334 resulted. Overall, a weak relationship existed between the microscopic SCC and those produced by the DCC which is not surprising because the DCC was designed and calibrated to quantify SCC in milk rather than secretions containing extremely high concentrations of cells. Modifications will be necessary for the DCC to better mirror values obtained by direct microscopic examination.