Mastitis

This is an interactive workshop day hosted by Dairy NZ, LIC, AgResearch and University of Waikato where Year 13 students that enjoy Science to experience what a careers could be available in the Agricultural sector.
DairyNZ really need
The day consists of students experiencing 4 different interactive workshops with each of the hosts.

This year the morning workshops consisted of:

Normal cow udder

Mastitis is the inflammation of the mammary gland and udder tissue,  It is a bacterial infection that has entered through the teat canal of the udder.  

Mastitis can affect only quarter of the udder because each quarter compartment is completely separate from the others.  

Symptoms of mastitis are: inflammation (swelling) the milk appears watery, has clots in it, flakes or pus, other symptoms can include lost of appetite, increase in body temperature, reduction in mobility.

Somatic cell counts are also taken often to help detect any clinical mastitis, this is where there is no signs or symptoms yet, however is detected because the somatic cell count is raised, this shows that there is a infection that the body is fighting.  Somatic cells are mostly leukocytes (white blood cells)

Inflamed udder - Mastitis

The SCC is quantified as the number of cells per ml of milk. In general terms:

• An individual cow SCC of 100,000 or less indicates an 'uninfected' cow, where there are no significant production losses due to subclinical mastitis.
• A threshold SCC of 200,000 would determine whether a cow is infected with mastitis. Cows with a result of greater than 200,000 are highly likely to be infected on at least one quarter.

Normal udder

inflammation of udder tissue

Normal udder

inflammation of udder tissue

• Cows infected with significant pathogens have an SCC of 300,000 or greater.

There are two sources of infection, contagious and environmental. 

Contagious bacteria are the bacteria that live on the cow's udder transferred during and after milking

The main bacteria are Escherichia coli (E. coli), Streptococcus uberis and Staphylococcus aureus, 

E.Coli

Staph aureus bacteria

There are different nutrient agar used for the different bacteria, this is used to confirm what type of bacteria are responsible for the infection.

Plating