Milk Examination

Artichoke (Arti) the Short Horned milking cow recently gave birth to Asparagus (Gus) the soon to be veal boy. Unfortunately, as is not so uncommon in dairy cows, Arti developed a case of mastitis (inflammation of the mammory gland) in one of her udders.

She has been treated with an antibiotic but the status of her infection is checked regularly. Here you see Courtney (who, by the way, did a photography project in Nepal for her senior art project! Analog!) doing a strip cup test where the milk from each udder is put into these white cups. The leukocytes in the mastitic milk react to sodium hydroxide. The result is a purplish gel. The non-infected milk does not do that. From today's test we learned that Arti is improving! Yay Arti!