Milk culture an important tool
DAIRY: Testing milk cultures with mastitis will help find treatment options
IMilk culture and sensitivities at an external lab can be used to not only determine the type of bacteria that could be there but to see what ‘drug’ is more likely to work against the infection.
t is that time of the year around dry off, where we talk a lot about milk cultures. Milk cultures are an excellent tool to help improve milk quality for your dairy herds.
So how does milk culturing work?
■ Step 1: A cow is selected to sample. This cow could have been identified to have clinical mastitis (clots or funny looking milk seen by the naked eye), or subclinical mastitis (either RMT paddle test positive or high somatic cell count seen on the herd test).
■ Step 2: Prepare the equipment needed to take the sample: sterile milk sample pottles, a vivid pen, gloves, teat wipes, a coloured spray can and a pocket belt.
■ Step 3: Take the milk sample. Gloves must be clean. Teats are wiped with teat wipes until the wipes come off clean; focusing on the end of the teat. Milk a couple of squirts of milk from the teat onto the ground before milking a few squirts into the pottle. It is best to have each quarter milk sampled in a separate pottle to avoid cross contamination.
■ Step 4: Label the pottle. It’s important that we have your farm name, the cow number, what quarter was collected, if she has had any mastitis treatments, and if she was clinical or subclinical. This will give the vet more information to be able to help you and your cows.
■ Step 5: Store the samples. Samples can be stored in the fridge or the freezer depending on how long before you can bring them into a vet clinic. Overnight; it is best to store them in the fridge, but longer than 24 hours it is best to store them in the freezer. This could however change depending what test is required.
■ Step 6: Processing the milk sample. Milk samples can be then brought into the clinic for testing.
There are a couple of options depending on farm requirements and your key vet’s recommendations: The basic milk culture in house is a quick and a cost effective method for determining what bacteria maybe present in the sample.
Milk culture and sensitivities at an external lab can be used to not only determine the type of bacteria that could be there but to see what ‘drug’ is more likely to work against the infection. The Mastatest machine can be run in house or purchased to run on your farm. This would give you what bacteria have been found and what is the best ‘drug’ to use.
Milk samples cannot be frozen to use this machine and have to be clinical samples to get the culture and sensitivities. A vat bulk milk test for the Dairy Antibiogram testing can be taken to determine the general trend of what bacteria are present and what ‘drug’ could work at that point of time.
Talk to your key vet here at Levin and Horowhenua Vets and they can help you with choosing the best option, or a combination of the above options, that are right for your farm.