Prevention and treatment of actinomycosis in cattle with obvious head and neck induration of jaw connection

Bovine actinomycosis is a kind of multi-bacterial and non-contact chronic infectious disease, which is characterized by actinomycosis of head, neck, subjaw and tongue and often occurs osteoporosis of skull.

Cattle

Etiology: the main pathogen of bovine actinomycosis is bovine actinomycetes, in addition, there are Lin's actinomycetes, Staphylococcus aureus, can cause similar pathological changes in cattle. Bovine actinomycetes mainly invade bones and are bacteria that do not move and do not form spores. In bovine tissue, it looks like sulfur particles, the size of other needles, gray, grayish yellow or light brown, soft or hard texture. The bacteria are weak in resistance and die within a few weeks of culture. This kind of bacteria generally exists in the mouth of healthy cattle as a normal group of bacteria. Therefore, the disease can be said to be an endogenous infection. The disease is common in cattle, especially young cattle, is the most likely to suffer from the disease, showing sporadic occurrence.

The pathogen of the disease exists in contaminated feed, soil and drinking water, and parasites in the mouth, pharynx and tonsil of cattle. Therefore, as long as there is damage to the mucosa or skin, actinomycosis can occur on its own. When cattle are fed with prickly feed, the oral mucosa is damaged and infected. It is observed that the disease often occurs when cattle graze in low wetlands.

Symptoms: there is a well-defined, immovable swelling of the jaw, which usually progresses slowly and is not found until the bone has been thickened or even difficult to chew. Sometimes the swelling develops rapidly and spreads to the entire skull in a short period of time. Hot pain at the initial stage of swelling, but no pain at the later stage.

With the development of time, the teeth become loose or even fall off, and the diseased cattle have difficulty in swallowing and chewing, and lose weight rapidly due to malnutrition. Sometimes the skin suppurates, breaks down and flows out pus, forming a fistula that cannot be cured for a long time. Head and neck tissue also often have induration, neither hot nor painful. When the tongue and pharynx tissue hardens, it is called "wooden tongue disease". The sick cattle salivate and it is difficult to chew. When the breast is sick, it shows diffuse swelling or focal induration, and the milk is sticky and mixed with pus.

Prevention and treatment: in order to prevent the occurrence of the disease, grazing in low-lying land should be avoided. When feeding, it is best to soak hay, grain chaff and other forage grass before feeding, to avoid stabbing oral mucosa, especially to prevent skin, mucous membrane damage, there are wounds, to be treated in time.

Induration can be surgically removed, if a fistula is formed, together with fistula removal. The newly resected cavity was filled with iodine tincture gauze for 2 days and replaced once, and 10% iodoform ether or 2% iodine aqueous solution was injected around the wound; oral administration of potassium iodide, 5 ml per day for adult cattle and 4 g for calves for 4 weeks; for severe cases, 10% sodium iodide, 50 ml per day, once every other day, for a total of 3-5 times. If iodine poisoning occurs in cattle, such as skin rash, hair removal, tears, emaciation, loss of appetite, etc., the dose should be reduced or the drug should be suspended for 6 days. Antibiotics are also effective for the disease, including penicillin, streptomycin, 2 million units of penicillin and 1 million units of streptomycin, once a day for 5 consecutive days as a course of treatment. At the same time, potassium iodide and streptomycin were used to treat soft tissue actinomycosis and wooden tongue disease.