We now have a milk culturing incubator with AI reading capabilities in our clinic!
This new machine can accurately identify many causes of mastitis after only 1-2 days incubation. It significantly reduces the time lag for results, as there’s no need to send the milk samples to a lab.
It also offers a cost-effective test for high somatic cell count (SCC) cows, helping distinguish between Strep and Staph – which could be a real advantage when making decisions coming up to dry-off.
The DairySmart machine offers two types of incubation plates:
In-season plates - which have four different growth mediums to help identify the different bacteria causing mastitis in a single culture, without needing extra tests done in a lab.
High SCC plates - which have only two growth mediums, but the plates can be set up for two cows to be cultured per plate to keep the costs down.
The benefit of DairySmart over Mastatest is that the number of samples we can test at once isn’t as limited. Rather than testing only a few milk samples, this new machine enables us to test more than 20 at a time.
