7 pages., via online journal, There are approximately 65 dairy farms in Mississippi (Gregory, 2019) with an estimated annual milk value of $26 million (Mississippi Farm Bureau, n.d.). Mastitis is the most expensive disease in the dairy industry (Neeser, Hueston, Godden, & Bey, 2006) and can decrease milk production by 1,181 kg per lactation in multiparous cows (Wilson et al., 2004). Clinical mastitis accounts for the largest use of antibiotics in livestock species (Thomson, Rantala, Hautala, Pyörälä, & Kaartinen, 2008), a circumstance that raises concerns of antimicrobial resistance (Pol & Ruegg, 2007; Wang et al., 2015) and increases producer expenses due to purchasing antibiotics and discarding milk during treatment (Rollin, Dhuyvetter, & Overton, 2015). On-farm bacteriological culturing (OFBC) enables producers to distinguish among broad categories of microorganisms with great accuracy and provides results within 24 hr, versus approximately a week when cultures are sent to a laboratory (Down, Bradley, Breen, & Green, 2017). Despite the availability of several viable OFBC systems, adoption of OFBC in Mississippi has been limited.
The purpose of the study reported here was to implement and evaluate an OFBC pilot test with a small sample of Mississippi dairy producers. The objectives of the study were
to identify reasons for producers' lack of OFBC adoption,
to explore change in producers' knowledge and perceptions of OFBC before and after trial, and
to assess the effectiveness of an Extension-led trialing program relative to OFBC adoption.
7 pages, On-farm bacteriologic culturing (OFBC) provides quick and inexpensive mastitis diagnosis, but commercial adoption of this innovation has been low in Mississippi. We implemented an Extension-led trialing program to identify reasons for producers' lack of OFBC adoption, explore change in producers' knowledge and perceptions of OFBC, and assess the effectiveness of the program relative to OFBC adoption. Most producers were unaware of OFBC initially but identified several benefits after trialing it for 30 days. The methodology for designing and implementing a trialing program based on Rogers's diffusion of innovation framework was effective and could be replicated easily in other contexts.
