Distribution of Bacterial Pathogens Causing Mastitis in Dairy Cows

Reeding of dairy ruminants represents a significant proportion of market milk production in agricultural regions localized in Slovak and Czech Republic. Mastitis is one of the biggest problems of dairy producers in these regions and causes great losses in the livestock economy. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate occurrence and aetiology of mastitis in two dairy herds of cows situated in Slovakia as well as in two dairy herds in Czech Republic. Methods: From a two Czech dairy herds, 405 and 320 lactating cows of holstein and czech spotted breed were included in the study. The same number of Slovak dairy farms with 226 and 153 cows of holstein and slovak spotted breed were exanimated. All herds were housed in a loose housing barn and milked twice a day. The diagnosis of mastitis was performed based on clinical examination of the udder, macroscopic evaluation of milk, with the evaluation of California mastitis test (CMT) and bacteriological analysis of milk samples from each exanimated cow. Results: Subclinical forms of mastitis were the most frequent in all monitored Slovak and Czech dairy herds. In the Czech dairy farms was recorded 16.0% and 6.8% occurrence of subclinical as well as 4.2% and 1.2% acute forms of mastitis, respectively. From Slovak dairy herds, the occurrence of subclinical mastitis was 11.3% and 7.8% with a 3.7% and 2.6% frequency of acute forms of mastitis. In the Czech and Slovak farm, the most commonly isolated pathogens were bacteria Staphylococcus spp. as group of coagulase negative staphylococci (CNS) and Staph. aureus. The others isolates from Czech farms were Enterococcus faecalis, Streptococcus uberis and Corynebacterium amycolatum. The second most frequent in the Slovak dairy farms were