Vol. 5, Issue 1, Part B (2023)

Streptococci is among mastitis causing bacterial pathogens in dairy farming in Ethiopia. Accordingly, the cross-sectional study to isolate Streptococcus from two selected intensive dairy farms and mastitis cases from Veterinary Teaching Hospital clinic in Addis Ababa University, college of Veterinary Medicine; from July to September, 2021 in Bishoftu town, central Ethiopia. A total of 52 milk samples were collected from the individual lactating cows through randomly sampling from the farms apparently health and purposively from clinical case from veterinary teaching hospital. The milk samples from both clinically infected and apparently health lactating cows and conducting culturing characterization (colony morphology and hemolysis), Gram staining (shape, arrangement and color) and Biochemical tests (catalase and oxidase) to differentiate Streptococcus from Staphylococcus as Streptococcus is catalase negative while Staphylococcus is catalase positive. The overall prevalence of streptococci isolated from both milks collected from the clinical and subclinical cow was 18/52 (34.6%) in which the prevalence of Streptococcus in milks collected from clinical case and apparently health milk collected from farm were 41.7% and 32.5% respectively with no significant differences (P-value = 0.3). Also the prevalence of Streptococcus were 33.3%, 45.5% and 30% at early, mid and late lactating period respectively with significant differences (P-value = 0.05). This indicated that those cows at mid period were highly infected with the Streptococcus. Therefore, good farm managements, hygiene of animal’s house, maintenance of temperature and ventilation and good milking practice, such as teat disinfection and drying, as well as regular cleaning and checking of the milking machine should be recommended for all farms.