Corynebacterium bovis is a pathogenic veterinary bacterium that causes mastitis and pyelonephritis

Pyelonephritis

Pyelonephritis is an ascending urinary tract infection that has reached the pyelum or pelvis of the kidney. It is a form of nephritis that is also referred to as pyelitis...

 in cattle.

C. bovis is a facultatively anaerobic

Facultative anaerobic organism

A facultative anaerobic organism is an organism, usually a bacterium, that makes ATP by aerobic respiration if oxygen is present but is also capable of switching to fermentation...

  Gram positive organism, characterized by non-encapsulated, non-sporulated, immobile, straight or curved rods with a length of 1 to 8 µm and width of 0.3 to 0.8 µm, which form ramified aggregations in culture (looking like "Chinese characters").

In mastitic infections C. bovis is spread from cow to cow most commonly through improper milking technique. However it is usually a mild infection resulting in elevated somatic cell count

Somatic cell count

Somatic cell count is an indicator of the quality of milk. Somatic cells are leukocytes . The number of somatic cells increases in response to pathogenic bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus, a cause of mastitis. The SCC is quantified as cells per ml...

 (SCC).
The bacterium is sensitive to the majority of antibiotics, such as the penicillin

Penicillin

Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....

s, ampicillin

Ampicillin

Ampicillin is a beta-lactam antibiotic that has been used extensively to treat bacterial infections since 1961. Until the introduction of ampicillin by the British company Beecham, penicillin therapies had only been effective against Gram-positive organisms such as staphylococci and streptococci...

, cephalosporin

Cephalosporin

The cephalosporins are a class of β-lactam antibiotics originally derived from Acremonium, which was previously known as "Cephalosporium".Together with cephamycins they constitute a subgroup of β-lactam antibiotics called cephems.-Medical use:...

s, quinolone

Quinolone

The quinolones are a family of synthetic broad-spectrum antibiotics. The term quinolone refers to potent synthetic chemotherapeutic antibacterials....

s, chloramphenicol

Chloramphenicol

Chloramphenicol is a bacteriostatic antimicrobial that became available in 1949. It is considered a prototypical broad-spectrum antibiotic, alongside the tetracyclines, and as it is both cheap and easy to manufacture it is frequently found as a drug of choice in the third world.Chloramphenicol is...

, tetracyclines, cefuroxime

Cefuroxime

Cefuroxime is a second-generation cephalosporin antibiotic that has been widely available in the USA as Ceftin since 1977. GlaxoSmithKline sells the antibiotic in the United Kingdom under the name Zinnat.-Indications:As for the other cephalosporins, although as a...

 and trimethoprim

Trimethoprim

Trimethoprim is a bacteriostatic antibiotic mainly used in the prophylaxis and treatment of urinary tract infections.It belongs to the class of chemotherapeutic agents known as dihydrofolate reductase inhibitors...

.