Abstract

Mastitis is a common disease of dairy cattle causing significant economic loss (Seegers et al. 2003), which has been estimated to cost the New Zealand dairy industry $180 million annually (Malcolm 2006). It has been shown that dairy cattle in the first lactation are particularly susceptible to infections from environmental pathogens, including Streptococcus uberis(Woolford & Lacy-Hulbert 1996) and that this was the most common environmental pathogen, involved in the development of clinical mastitis of dairy cattle in New Zealand (Pankey et al. 1982, 1996; McDougall,1999). Studies completed in the Waikato region of New Zealand described the pathogens isolated from dairy cattle with clinical mastitis and reported that 27 to 75% of cases were infected with Streptococcus uberis, whereas 9 to 10% were Coagulase-negative-staphylococci(CNS), 3 to 5% were Staphylococcus aureus, 2 to 5% were coliforms and finally 1.5 to 4 % were  Strep.

Z, Ullah, JK Margerison, DC Simcock, A Thatcher, and N Lopez-Villalobos

Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Volume 73, Hamilton, 183-185, 2013