Bacteria Associated with Bovine Mastitis Cows in Khartoum State, Sudan

Abstract

Bovine mastitis is the main constrain facing the dairy industry and production in Sudan. Previous surveys and studies conducted in different districts of Sudan showed that the occurrence of bovine mastitis is considerably high. Thus, this study was conducted in some selected dairy farms in Khartoum State in order to isolate and identify the bacteria associated with bovine mastitis. In this study, 150 milk samples were obtained from mastitic cows in East Nile dairy farms; Mahlab-2, Elshigla, El- keraib and El- Selait localities during the period from April 2013 to May 2015. Conventional bacteriological methods for identification were performed for the identification of the isolates. One hundred twenty six pathogenic bacteria were successfully isolated from 150 milk samples of which 100 (79.4%), 23(18.2%) and 3 (2.4%) were Gram positive, Gram negative and yeast respectively. Staphylococcus spp. was the most isolated bacteria 67(53.2%). The significance of each categorical variable against positive cases of mastitis was tested by using Chi-square or Fisher Exact test. All statistical tests were conducted using SPSS version 20 (IBM, SPSS) at alpha equal to or less than 0.05 significance level. Our data failed to detect any statistical association between milk source and the characteristic of sampled milk (Chi-square = 1.68, df = 3, p = 0.64). In addition, no association between Staphylococcus isolates and their growth pattern was observed in this study (Chi-square = 2.43, df = 3, p = 0.49). This study revealed that a number of pathogenic bacteria of which many are of public health concern were isolated from mastitis cow’s milk. Selection of the effective antibiotics for treatment of mastitis together with improvement sanitary conditions during milking may reduce the incidence of mastitis.