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Swine practice: Ileitis vaccination markedly improves general health
Dübendorf (aho) – According to a report recently published in the German-language veterinary journal “Tierärztliche Umschau”, ileitis vaccination in finishing pigs reduces mortality due to non-ileitis diseases as well as mortality due to ileitis itself. The Swiss authors of the report carried out a study in more than 15,000 pigs in which they compared a group receiving an oral ileitis vaccine with two groups receiving different th-ree-week antibiotic regimes and an untreated control group. Average daily weight gain was highest in the vaccinated group (799 g), whilst the corresponding figures for the two antibiotic-treated groups were 767 g and 757 g; as expected, the untreated control group fared worst, with an average daily weight gain of just 650 g.
One surprising finding to emerge from the analysis of the results was that, whilst mortality due to non-ileitis diseases reached 5.9% in the untreated animals, it was as low as 2.1% in the animals receiving the ileitis vaccine; the corresponding figures for the two antibiotic-treated groups were slightly higher at 2.3% and 2.5%. The authors conclude that the lower mortality rate is probably due to an improvement in general health, which leads to greater resistance and tolerance to other infectious or multifactorial diseases.
The results obtained in this study confirm the findings of Danish vets, who noted that pigs with diarrhoea were four times more likely to develop a respiratory disease.
Reference:
Thaker MYC, Bilkei G. Kurzbericht aus der Praxis: Vergleich der Wirkung einer oralen Vakzination oder verschiedener antibiotischer Prophylaxen gegen Lawsonia intracellularis verursachte Verluste in einem Schweinemastbestand mit hohem Erregerdruck durch porcine proliferative Enteropathie (PPE). Tierärztl Umsch 2006; 61 (7): 372-6
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