Diagnosing infections quickly and accurately in dairy cows is vital for farmers and veterinarians to maintain the health of herds. Seeing this need firsthand, University of Minnesota veterinarians and animal scientists partnered to create an easy diagnostic tool that can be deployed on the farm. 

More than 20 years later, the Minnesota Easy® Culture System continues to provide a simple and cost-effective means of diagnosing mastitis infections, the most common and costly disease in the dairy industry. 

The system is recommended for clinical mastitis cases. Cows with this type of mastitis typically have inflamed udders and produce abnormal-looking milk. Antibiotics are often prescribed to treat it. 

“It’s a very simple tool that you can use on the farm to make better treatment decisions and practice good antibiotic stewardship,” says Erin Royster, associate professor and faculty advisor for the Laboratory for Udder Health (LUH) at the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

The Minnesota Easy® system offers a line of culture plates—think Petri dishes—that contain a substance known as growth media used to cultivate bacterial populations for testing. The University creates its own proprietary media that is produced and loaded into the plates on-site through the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. 

The original line of plates focuses on categorizing infection sources such as Staphylococcus and Streptococcus bacterial strains—the most common mastitis culprits—as well as E. coli or Klebsiella. 

“This tells the producer whether they need to use antibiotics to help the cow clear the infection, or whether the cow’s immune system will likely clear the infection without help,” Royster says. 

Understanding which type of organism is causing an infection also reveals how the bacteria are spreading, either as a contagion through contact with contaminated equipment, animals and people, or through contact with environmental sources such as manure, soil and bedding. 

The LUH recently expanded its offerings, adding a culture plate for detecting Mycoplasma bacteria, which can cause not only mastitis but also pneumonia, endometritis, endocarditis, arthritis, and other problems in cattle. 

“The original Minnesota Easy® Culture plates were not designed to grow Mycoplasma, which requires specialized growth media and a low-oxygen environment during incubation,” Royster says. “We decided to add the Mycoplasma plate to our product offerings as a result of client requests. It is the same media we have been using in the LUH for years to diagnose Mycoplasma in milk.”

And with new equipment expected to come online within the next year, Royster says the lab’s production capacity will increase. 

For more information about the Minnesota Easy® Culture System, visit its website.