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Background The inflammation of mammary gland tissue is called mastitis. It is an important aspects of animal health and productivity, public health and economy. Camel mastitis is relatively not well studied in camel-rearing areas all over the world especially the prevalence of subclinical mastitis. Mastitis appears in two forms: clinical mastitis, where symptoms are visible and easy to diagnose, and subclinical mastitis where symptoms are invisible and require indirect means for diagnosis. In Iraq, few reports have been done on the camels in general and on mastitis in particular in compare to other livestock such as cattle, sheep and goat. Moreover, little attention of mastitis as a problem was paid at herd level. Consequently, this study intends to study the clinical and subclinical mastitis and its etiologic agents in she-camels at 3 herds of camel that reared in Samawah desert / Al Muthanna governorate using SCC, CMT in addition to, isolate and identified of the bacterial causative agents. Materials and Methods This study was performed by visiting various camel herds in the desert of Samawah / Al Muthanna governorate. Thirty milk samples were collected from apparently clinical normal she- camels within 3 camelids herds within the time period between December 2016 to March 2017. The milk samples were aseptically collected from the udder after stimulation of she-camel to produce milk. The samples were kept on ice during transportation to the laboratory and kept in the refrigerator until doing all diagnostic procedures. The quarter milk samples were subjected to bacteriological isolation and mastitis screening tests including somatic cell count and California mastitis test. iv Results The pH of fresh camel milk varied from 6.1 to 6.5. All milk samples revealed bright white color with upper thick creamy layer. No any signs of clinical mastitis were observed in all examined she-camels. Meanwhile, keratosis of the teats and udder due to severe ticks infestation were observed in 25 out of 30 she camels with percentages of 83.33% revealed. The subclinical mastitis was determined in 9 out of 30 with a percentage of 30% in lactating she-camels using SCC, CMT. Bacteria were isolated from the 9 cases that were revealed positive results in CMT and SCC. The Enterobacterium spp., Staphylococcus spp. and Streptococcus spp were the most important organism isolated from the subclinical mastitis milk samples and the percentages of isolation were 55.55% (5 out of 9) , 33.33% (2 out of 9) and 11.11% (1 out of 9) respectively. Conclusions In conclusion, this study confirmed the correlation between SCC and CMT in diagnosis of subclinical mastitis in she-camel. This study approved the absence of clinical mastitis in she-camel due to the nature of the milk production. However, subclinical mastitis were observed in 30% of the examined animals. Early detection of subclinical mastitis and interference may aid in disease control. Various mastitis pathogens were identified from subclinical mastitis, with relatively high prevalence of Enterobactericae. The authors recommend doing another future studies and including large number of the animals, in addition to study the natural physiological phenomena of milk production in the she- camels. |
