I want to go for total bacterial count using serial dilution method from swab samples taken from animal cages. What should be the preferred inoculation broth, Tryptose soy broth, Brain Heart infusion broth or nutrient broth or all can be used effectively. Also what media should be used for pour plate method for checking the growth of colonies.
I would go for nutrient agar or plate count agar (I don't understand why you suggest broths for total plate count), unless you also care to isolate a specific or fastidious bacterium that needs special nutrients, e.g. Campylobacter, in which case there are options with more complex and selective mediawhich you can use on top of the non selective agar. But if you only care for total count, the PCA and NA are fine. In any case, it's always useful to check a medium's performance by using in addition an alternative medium at the same time to see which gives you the highest recovery
The most common and cheapest medias are plate count agar and nutrient agar. I always used plate count agar. The results were perfect. If you use wide petri dishes counting will be easier than the narrow one. You can also use lens for see minor colonies.
If you want to dermine the plate count of your samples, an enrichment in a broth lead to a wrong result. Use sterile physiological NaCl for dilution. Within the first expriment I would try a combination of agarmedia such as PCA, tryptic soy agar or R2A.
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