Farmscape for February 4, 2021

A Professor with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine says research aimed at improving the diagnosis of Brachyspira associated diarrhea have implications for the diagnosis of other diarrheas.
Brachyspira is a family of bacteria, some species of which cause disease while other species are simply part of a healthy gut and are harmless.
The Western College of Veterinary Medicine is revaluating and reformatting the diagnosis of Brachyspira diarrhea in an effort to more accurately determine the species and the appropriate treatment.
Dr. John Harding, a Professor with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, says Brachyspira isn't the only cause of diarrhea.

Clip-Dr. John Harding-Western College of Veterinary Medicine:
Diarrhea, when seen on the farm, could be caused by multiple organisms so the family of Brachyspira is just one of those.
We also have Salmonella and we have Lawsonia and in some age groups we have E. coli so I think we have to look at diarrhea from a more holistic approach, saying Brachyspira is just one set of organisms that may be present but there could be others there are well.
There could a bunch of viral diseases as well.
We know that PED is certainly one, TGE in past years, so lots of other diseases.
We have to take a holistic approach to this and recognise that there could pigs and could be farms where we have many of these or some those different organisms together and present in the same pig.
Then obviously the challenge is trying to decipher which of these organisms is more important and what we can control the easiest.

Dr. Harding notes sometimes you tackle the things that can be easily tackled and the rest either self eliminate or cure over time because the health of the gut has been restored by eliminating some of the organisms.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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