Page 3 of articles about diarrhoea

Changes on the source of replacement animals are always difficult decisions. Monitoring through testing before the introduction of the new animals into the farm is not sufficient.

List of practical measures applied in our daily work with good results. Those measures must be considered as a whole and never individually.

We need to understand what is happening and what the circumstances are that cause bacteria that are also present in the microbiota of healthy piglets to multiply in such a way that they are capable of causing diarrhoea.

To diagnose E. coli scours we must rule out all other causative agents of early nursery scours, including TGE, PEDv, PDCoV, Rotavirus, and Salmonellosis, and get a positive E. coli culture from piglet rectal swabs.

Achieving good levels of colostral immunity by vaccinating sows is the first step to prevent scours; subsequently, active pre or post-weaning immunization must be added to prevent post-weaning diarrhoea.

Oedema disease prevention has traditionally been accomplished through the administration of antibiotics or manipulation of gut microbiota through diet. However, in recent years, many vaccines have been developed to prevent clinical manifestation of the disease.

It appears that the use of non-toxigenic C. difficile as a probiotic can reduce the severity of histologic lesions and the quantity of toxins detected in neonatal piglets.

Diarrhoea is their most typical clinical manifestation, and the earlier the onset, the more harmful it is. Newborn piglets can present with another clinical picture, with signs of sepsis (shock, depression, death, polyarthritis), which is associated with an extraintestinal E. coli.

Management factors and environmental conditions are often triggers or predisposing agents, not only to the clinical presentation of the disease, but also its severity and course.

At autopsy, haemorrhagic enterocolitis with mucosal oedema, enlarged spleen and haemorrhagic mesentery were observed.

Single animal treatment or batch medication? in any case, the treatment and choice of medication should be done based on resistance testing.

Enric Marco sums up the essential points to control post-weaning diarrhoea in our farm.