Mycoplasma surveillance in dairy herds is usually performed by monitoring herds using bulk tank milk samples. Because of mycoplasma intermittent excretion in the infected animals, these analyses should be performed periodically to avoid false negative diagnosis.

In contagious agalactia endemic areas, not all clinical mastitis sporadically developed are always studied to know their aetiology and could be antibiotic treated as a conventional bacterial mastitis, unknowing their mycoplasma aetiology. The present study was designed to compare the validity of goat mastitis milk samples as a complement of bulk tank milk sample, in order to monitoring dairy goat herds for mycoplasma surveillance in a endemic contagious agalactia area.

Methods

A total of forty Murciano-Granadinas goat herds were studied for mycoplasma diagnosis using bulk tank milk samples, using between 4 and 5 samples by herd (N= 196) and a total of 466 mastitis milk samples. All samples were processed by culture in specific mycoplasma medium and PCR by direct extraction of DNA.

Results

Mycoplasma agalactiae and/or Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. capri. were detected in a total of 29 herds. Samples for clinical mastitis were able to detect the 79.3% of the positive herds, while samples from bulk tank milk periodically taken detected lower number of the infected herds (62%). Only six mycoplasma positive herds were not diagnosed by using mastitis milk samples but from five of these herds fewer than 10 mastitis samples were respectively analysed. These results show that milk samples from mastitis goats are a valuable complement of bulk tank milk samples for mycoplasma monitoring in programs for contagious agalactia surveillance.