Treatment Methods for Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infection in Ostrich Farming

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is widely present in air, feces, soil, and sewage ponds, and the bacterium has extremely strong resistance to the external environment. It is a Gram-negative bacillus with a flagellum at one end and is motile. The bacterium grows well on ordinary culture media and can produce blue-green pigment and an aromatic odor, and forms a hemolytic zone on blood agar. The bacterium can produce exotoxins and very easily forms drug-resistant strains. This disease can occur in ostriches of all ages, and chicks and young birds from 1 to 90 days of age are more susceptible. Most die from the septicemic process, and the mortality rate is extremely high. Contaminated sites, water sources, soil, feed and forage, and air are important sources of infection, and the routes of transmission are also varied.

Mental depression and even listlessness, decreased appetite or complete loss of appetite, unwillingness to move, and body temperature rising above 42 °C. Passage of green or yellow-white thin feces, anal contamination, and edema. Lacrimation, eyelid swelling, purulent secretions at the eye margins, some with ulcerative lesions on the cornea, severe cases with blindness, and most progress to death. Parenchymal organs all show hemorrhagic changes, and the heart, spleen, liver, brain, kidneys, stomach, and intestines all have petechiae and ecchymoses. The liver is earth-yellow and enlarged, with scattered yellow-white small necrotic foci.

Prevention and control measures:

1. Treatment: Sick birds can be given intramuscular gentamicin 3,000 to 5,000 units/kg body weight, while erythromycin eye ointment is used to treat eye disease, applied twice daily.

2. Prevention: The focus is on improving environmental hygiene and carrying out regular thorough disinfection, especially disinfection of hatcheries, incubators, brooding rooms, and bedding material, which is particularly important.

As for immunization prevention, it is currently generally believed that preventive vaccination with a formaldehyde-inactivated vaccine prepared from strains containing multiple serotypes isolated from the local area (farm, flock) can be used. Immunity can be produced 5 to 6 days after inoculation, and the immune period is about half a year.