Pyocine typing as an epidemiological marker in Pseudomonas aeruginosa mastitis in cattle.

Pyocine typing was used for the characterization of 134 Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from bovine mastitis. The scheme of Gillies & Govan (1966) was adopted with some modifications, and the procedure gave 89.6% typability. Pyocine type 1 strains were most commonly encountered and were followed in frequency by types 10 and 3. The introduction of two additional indicator strains allowed for division of these types into subtypes.In spite of some limitations, discussed in the paper, the pyocine typing scheme proved to be useful in ;marking' P. aeruginosa strains and in following their association with bovine mastitis in various herds.