Brucellosis of mink

The disease is a zoonotic chronic bacterial disease, which is characterized by periodic relaxation fever or long-term wavy fever, abortion of pregnant female marten, weak birth of young mink, high mortality rate in the week, orchitis in individual male marten, decreased mating ability and so on.

[pathogen] the disease is a chronic infectious disease caused by sheep type, pig type and cattle type bacteria of Brucella. Brucella is a kind of coccobacterium which is 1 to 2 microns long and 0.5 microns wide, can move and does not produce spores. In older media, sometimes one end expands into a rod, so some scholars classify it as Corynebacterium.

[Epidemiology] the disease is mainly caused by feed infection, especially raw feeding of cattle, sheep viscera and offal, dairy products, etc., which is relatively dangerous. Minks and other economic animals have sporadic prevalence of the disease. The infection rate of adult minks is higher and the incidence of young minks is lower.

Lochia secretions and fetuses from aborted female minks are the most dangerous source of infection. Brucellosis can be transmitted not only through digestive tract and contact, but also through the semen of infected male minks.

[clinical symptoms] latent process is the main feature of fur animals suffering from the disease. Female minks mainly show abortion, elevated body temperature, or weak offspring, loss of appetite, and some suppurative conjunctivitis.

[pathological anatomical changes] female minks who died in the middle and third trimester of pregnancy had endometrial inflammation or erosion of the fetus. There are secretions attached to the vulva and enlarged lymph nodes and spleen.

Other organs showed filling and bleeding, and individual orchitis occurred in male minks. The histopathological changes were mainly lymphoid cell and multinucleated cell proliferation.

[diagnosis] brucellosis in economic animals is difficult to diagnose because of the lack of characteristic clinical symptoms. The changes of pathological anatomy are not obvious, and bacteriological examination is of practical significance.

[treatment] No specific treatment. Only through serological method to detect positive animals, combined with winter skin elimination, self-purification.

[preventive measures] strictly implement the veterinary health and epidemic prevention system, and prohibit brucellosis positive animals from entering the field. Meat and by-products from unknown sources are not fed, or can only be fed after high temperature and harmless treatment.