by Karoline Inong

Created on: May 03, 2009

Coccidosis in pigs is simply caused by small parasites called coccidia that actually live and multiply inside the host cells, typically located in the intestinal tract. There happen to be three types which are Eimeria, Isospora and Cyptosporidia. The disease is pretty common and widespread typically in piglets in the suckling period and occasionally it does occur in pigs up to 15 weeks of age.

Typically tiny-egg like infected structures often called oocysts are passed out in the feces into the environment where they can develop or sporulate. Typically this takes place within 12-24 hours at temperatures ranging from 77F-95F.The oocytes can survive outside of the pig's body for many months and are often very difficult to kill because they are resistant to most disinfectants. The only disinfectant that is able to be effective against the oocytes is OO-CIDE (Antec).

The oocysts are typically eaten by the pigs and then it basically undergoes three complex developments in the wall of the small intestine to essentially complete the cycle and during this period is when the damage occurs. It is important to remove sow feces from the farrowing houses daily.

Symptoms:

In piglets, it can cause diarrhea due to the damage caused to the wall of their small intestine. Like many other diseases this one is typically followed by secondary bacterial infections. The feces may vary in color as well as consistency from yellow to grey green , or blood depending on the severity of the condition. Dehydration is pretty common in pigs with coccidiosis. Sometimes you may seen coccidiosis in young boars and gilts that are house in permanently populated pens that are floor fed. The secondary infections causeed by bacteria and viruses can result in high mortality but the mortality due to coccidiosis is rather low on it's own.

Treatment:

For the treatment to be effective in the pigs, you must give it before the invasion of the intestinal wall because once the clinical signs have appeared the damage in the intestines has already been done. Some things you can do to treat them before clinical signs is to medicate the sow feed with amprolium premix 1kg/tonne, monensin sodium 100g/tonne or sulphadimidine 100g/tonne. Typically you will feed this from the time the sow enters the farrowing house and throughout lactation. You can also inject each litter with a long-acting sulphonamide when they have reached six days of age. Also you can medicate small amounts of milk powder with a coccidiostat such as amprolium

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