Prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus Isolated from Mastitic Milk, Udder Surfaces and Milkers’ Hands from Different Farms in Bikaner, Rajasthan Bhati Taruna1,*, Kumar Gaurav2, Khichar Vikas3, Kataria Anil Kumar1 1Department of Veterinary Microbiology, College of Veterinary and Animal Science, RAJUVAS, Bikaner, India 2Department of Veterinary Microbiology, M.B. Veterinary College, Dungarpur, India 3Department of Animal Husbandry, Government of Haryana, India *Corresponding author: T Bhati; Email: vetcvas.bhati@gmail.com
Online published on 7 February, 2019. Abstract Staphylococcus aureus is recognized worldwide as one of the most important contagious mastitis pathogen and is frequently isolated from mastitic milk and extramammary sites. The present study was undertaken to study prevalence of S. aureus strains isolated from mastitic milk, udder surfaces and milkers’ hands from organized (n=5) and unorganized dairy farms (n=2). For this, a total of 197 samples (80 mastitic milk samples, 66 udder swabs and 51 swabs of milkers’ hands) were collected from different places. A total of 107 isolates including 51 from mastitic milk samples, 35 from udder and 21 from milkers’ hands, were presumptively identified as S. aureus on the basis of cultural and biochemical properties and then genotypically confirmed using 23S rRNA ribotyping followed by PCR amplification of nuc gene. An overall recovery rate of S. aureus was 54.3% with highest (63.8%) recovery from mastitic milk samples followed by udder (53.0%) and milkers’ hands (41.2%). The unorganized dairy farm showed highest prevalence (65.4%) of S. aureus than that in other farms. Top Keywords . Mastitis, nuc gene, ribotyping, Staphylococcus aureus. Top |