Prevalence of Bovine Mastitis in the Western Region of Cameroon

Abstract

Mastitis is the major disease in milking cows causing huge losses to the dairy industry worldwide. It is in view to contribute to the eradication of this pathology that the present study was carried out in cattle farms of the West Region of Cameroon from March 2020 to November 2020. A total of 473 lactating cows of local and improved breeds were screened for mastitis. Screening for clinical and sub-clinical mastitis was based on the observation of clinical signs and on the use of the California Mastitis Test (CMT) respectively. The overall prevalence was 34.88%, among which 9.72% and 25.16% represented clinical and subclinical mastitis respectively. In summary, the factors influencing the occurrence of mastitis were: the divisions surveyed (p<0.001), breed type (p=0.003), age range (p<0,001), farm type (p=0.05), soil type (p<0,001), cleaning frequency (p<0.001), feeding method (p<0.001), hygiene of udder (p=0.05) and stage of lactation (p=0.02). The results obtained allow us to recommend an improvement of the breeding conditions to prevent mastitis, because once mastitis appears in a farm, it becomes very difficult to eradicate it.