“That’s really disappointing! What went wrong? How could there be “no growth”? They were all clinical cases! Do we need to re-train the milking staff?”
These are not uncommon questions when discussing milk culture results, and they arise when results don’t seem to match expectations.
I had called the farm to discuss the results from a batch of 16 milk samples that had been sent off to the laboratory for milk cultures.
Common reasons for taking milk culture samples are to find out what is causing the problem, how to treat the clinical cases and how to prevent more cases.
Of the 16 samples, three returned a culture result of Strep uberis, one returned a Staph aureus, and one was reported as “Mixed enteric flora”.
The remaining 11 samples were reported as “No growth”.