What specific drug works well for treating swine coccidiosis

Swine coccidiosis is a digestive tract disease of piglets caused by coccidia of the genera Eimeria and Isospora, causing diarrhea, weight loss and stunted growth. Adult pigs are mostly carriers. So what are the specific drugs for swine coccidiosis?

1. Specific drugs for swine coccidiosis

For treatment, ever since the anticoccidial effect of sulfonamides was discovered, various sulfonamides and other drugs have been tried for treating coccidiosis. Unfortunately, coccidiosis develops rapidly, and treatment is often given too late to achieve consistently good therapeutic results.

Because coccidiosis in piglets often occurs at around 7 days of age, it is possible to give medication in advance to the whole litter 2 to 3 days before the onset of the disease. Since the piglets still need to nurse, each piglet should be treated orally for 5 days; of course, this is hard work. Adding anticoccidial drugs to the piglets' drinking water or using them in combination with iron preparations may be effective for treating swine coccidiosis; however, it cannot be guaranteed that every pig will receive an adequate dose. There is still no anticoccidial drug approved for use in pigs, nor any experimental dosage, but some compounds reported in the literature may be effective.

Toltrazuril (5% suspension) can be tried for treating swine coccidiosis at a dose of 20 to 30 mg/kg orally; it can reduce diarrhea in piglets, reduce oocysts in the feces, and reduce the incidence rate from 71% to 22%. It can kill both the sexual stage and the asexual stage of the parasite. According to the authors' trials, toltrazuril does indeed have a good therapeutic effect on Isospora coccidiosis in piglets.

2. Preventive measures for swine coccidiosis

For prevention, the best preventive method is to do a good job of environmental sanitation: clean the farrowing house well; before farrowing, the sow's feces must be removed; the farrowing house should be disinfected with bleaching powder (concentration of at least 50%) or ammonia water for more than several hours or fumigated. During disinfection, the pig pen should be empty. To prevent workers from inhaling bleaching powder or ammonia vapor, there should be adequate ventilation or workers should wear gas masks. Entry of keepers into the farrowing house should be restricted to prevent oocysts from being brought in on shoes or clothing; pets should also be strictly kept out of the farrowing house, because their paws can carry oocysts and cause oocysts to spread in the farrowing house. Rodent control should be carried out vigorously to prevent rodents from mechanically transmitting oocysts. After each farrowing, the pig pen should be disinfected again to prevent newborn piglets from being infected with coccidiosis.

Swine coccidiosis is mostly seen in piglets and can cause severe digestive tract disease in piglets. If you want piglets to grow healthily, you must take good preventive and treatment measures.