Calidad bacteriológica de la leche cruda de cabra producida en la parroquia Faría, municipio Miranda, estado Zulia, Venezuela

type and number of bacteria in milk at farm level is associated with sanitary management conditions of both, farm and animals which affects its microbiological quality. with the objective of studying the bacteriological qualiy of raw goat milk produced in the faria civil parish, miranda municipality of zulia state, 100 milk samples were collected directly from both nipples of 50 goats belonging to 10 farms and 10 samples from the milk pool of each of such farms. in the nipple samples bacteria were identified by biochemical tests while in the pool samples counts of mesophilic aerobic (ma), total coliform (tc), psychrophilic (ps), thermophilic (ter) and thermoduric (ted) bacteria were performed according to apha methods. coliforms in these pool samples were also identified by biochemical tests. bacteria genus aisolated from nipples were: staphylococci sp. 54.84% from which 32.26% were coagulase negative and 22.58% st. aureus, streptococcus 22.58% from which 19.35% were streptococcus sp. and 3.23% were str. agalactiae, micrococcus 16.13% and pseudomonas 6.45%. average pool sample counts were: 1.8x107, 8.3x105, 2.5x103, 1.8x104 and 1.1x104 (ufc.ml-1) for ma, tc, ps, ter and ted respectively. coliforms found were: e. coli 40%, enterobacter sakazakii 25%, citrobacter spp. 20%, enterobacter spp.10% and klebsiella 5%.from these results we concluded that in the milk of the farms tested, representatives of the faria civil parish predominates bacteria species associated with intramammary infections. elevated bacteria counts evidence a low bacteriological quality of this goat milk therefore making its use for raw milk fresh cheesemaking unsafe and risky for public health.