Some bacteria that cause mastitis respond to common mastitis
treatments and should be treated that way. However, evidence
shows that many cases of clinical mastitis do not respond to
antibiotic treatment and so should not be treated with
antibiotics. How can someone know the difference? The answer is
by culturing the milk of clinically infected cows to at least
categorize the pathogens as a type that responds or a type that
does not. Many will say sending milk away for culture takes days
and by then the cow should have been treated. That may be true,
but dairy producers culturing their own milk is an alternative
with a much shorter time until the results are known (see
article “On-YOUR-farm milk culturing?”). At least three dairy
producers in northeast Michigan do their own on-farm milk
cultures. All three of these producers consistently produce milk
from cows with average bulk tank somatic cell counts (SCC) less
than 100,000. Culturing milk is part of their complete program
for cow health and quality milk, n