The Cowside II milk test from Charm Sciences offers accurate on-farm screening of milk for all major classes of antibiotics.

Antibiotic screening of milk is essential to ensure quality and to protect the food chain.

What products does it test?

• Dairy farm milk samples

• Bulk milk samples.

What does it test for?

Antibiotics:

• Beta-lactams

• Sulphonamides

• Tetracyclines

• Macrolides

• Aminoglycosides.

Why Choose Charm Cowside II?

• This is a highly user-friendly method of milk testing, where you simply add milk to a tube and incubate

• It’s rapid, providing results in around three hours

• It uses a simple, visual colour range to indicate whether the sample has passed or failed

• It detects a wide range of milk antibiotics in a single test and requires no special reader to do this

• Charm Cowside II meets current regulations for testing 24 different antibiotics at or below specified limits

• It is ideal for large volume milk testing.

How it Works

Cowside II is a broad-spectrum antibiotic inhibition test and it can run on your existing incubator equipment.[RG1] [BH2]

The kit consists of single-service vials that contain pre-measured bacterial spores, media and a pH indicator.

The process is straightforward. You add milk to the vial and incubate it. Set your timer for three hours.

The starting colour of the sample in the vial is purple.

During this period, if antibiotics are absent in the milk sample you’ve added, the spores will germinate and grow.

Once the spores generate acid, this will show up as a colour change in the vial to yellow.

But, if there are antibiotics present in the milk sample, then this will retard or inhibit microbial growth, not generating any acid. This means the sample will remain purple.

• Antibiotic-positive samples stay purple, or are blue

• Antibiotic-negative samples turn yellow or green.

These colour results are stable for up to 16 hours.

Essential Antibiotic Testing for Milk

You can test for all major classes of antibiotics in your dairy products with confidence using the Charm Cowside II.

The process is easy, requires no lab involvement, and can help with your quality control and compliance.

For more information, please contact Calibre Control.