The objectives of this work were to study the prevalence and the patterns of antibiotic resistance of staphylococcal isolates from bulk-tank milk of goat herds across Greece, to assess possible associations of the presence of antibiotic resistance with the quality of milk in these herds and to evaluate herd-related factors potentially associated with the presence of antibiotic resistance among these staphylococcal isolates. A cross-sectional study was performed on 119 goat herds in Greece. Bulk-tank milk samples were collected for bacteriological examination; staphylococcal isolates were evaluated for resistance to 20 antibiotics. Oxacillin-resistant, resistant to at least one antibiotic, and multi-resistant staphylococcal isolates were recovered from 5.0%, 30.3%, and 16.0% of herds, respectively. Of 80 isolates, 7.5% were resistant to oxacillin, 50.0% were resistant to at least one antibiotic and 27.5% were multi-resistant. Resistance was seen more frequently among coagulase-negative staphylococci (59.3%) than among Staphylococcus aureus (23.8%). Resistance was more frequent against penicillin and ampicillin (41.3% of isolates) and fosfomycin (27.5%). No association was found with biofilm formation by staphylococci. For recovery of oxacillin-resistant isolates, the presence of working staff in the herds emerged as a significant factor; respective factors for the isolation of staphylococci resistant to at least one antibiotic were part-time farming and high (>10) number of systemic disinfections in the farm annually. The same three factors concurrently were also identified to be significant for the recovery of multi-resistant isolates.
Keywords: bulk-tank milk; goat; mastitis; methicillin; milk; somatic cell counts; staphylococcus; tetracycline; total bacterial counts.