CHARACTERIZATION OF COAGULASE-POSITIVE STAPH. AUREUS IN GOATS AND SHEEP MASTITIS

Examination of 179 normal milk samples from she-goats and ewes with 5 field tests as well as bacteriological procedures, showed that both methods should be applied in parallel for the proper diagnosis of the subclinical mastitis in both species.
Bacteriological examination of mastitic milk samples from she-goats (39) showed that the acute staphylococcal mastitis was the most prominant type (53.85%), from which 23.08% samples showed mixed infection. On contrary, in ewes the acute staphyloccocal mastitis (26.1%) came in the second level after chronic streptococcal infection.
Characterization of the recovered coagulase-positive strains either from goat origin (23 isolates) and 8 strains of sheep origin showed that all of them coagulated rabbit plasma, none coagulated horse plasma and showed variable incidences to cattle, sheep and human plasmas. Most of them were alpha-haemolysin producers (60 - 62%) and all of them were non-fibrinolytic, which indicated that such isolates were of animal origin. Moreover, according to their suscepti bility to chemotherapeutic agents in-vitro, the goat strains were highly sensitive to tetracycline (91.39%), erythromycin (826%) and cephalothin (78.3%), while the sheep strains were affected by chlora mphenicol (87.5%) and erythromycin (75.00%).