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Abstract Background Porcine ear necrosis (PEN) is a worldwide health issue and its aetiology is still unclear. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence and the severity of PEN in a commercial farm, associated with pig behaviour and health biomarkers measures. On two consecutive batches, PEN prevalence was determined at the pen level. PEN scores, blood haptoglobin concentration and oxidative status were measured on two pigs per pen (n = 48 pens) 9, 30 and 50 days (D) after arrival to the post-weaning unit. Social nosing, oral manipulation and aggression of pen mates and exploration of enrichment materials were observed on two to three pigs per pen twice a week from D9 to D50. Results At the pen level, the higher the time spent nosing pen mates, the lower the percentage of pigs affected by PEN during both the early and the late post-weaning periods (P

Knowing porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) status is essential for designing herd management protocols. For this, weaning-age pigs are a key subpopulation. Recently, different alternatives to blood sampling have been introduced because they are easier, welfare-friendly and cost-saving tools. Moreover, most of them allow the testing of more animals and seem to be more sensitive in low-prevalence scenarios. However, these studies were implemented mainly in PRRSV-2-infected herds. The first objective of our study was to compare the rate of detection of PRRSV-1 by RT-qPCR in individual serum samples, family oral fluid samples (FOF) and udder wipes (UW) collected the day before weaning. The second objective was to evaluate the suitability of pooling. The study was performed on a 210-sow farrow-to-finish farm which was PRRSV-1 infected and unstable. A total of 119 litters were sampled. The rate of detection of PRRSV-1 in blood samples, FOF and UW was 10.9%, 7.6% and 0.8%, respectively. The agreement between sera and FOF was almost perfect even if the detection capacity of sera was numerically superior to FOF. The Ct values of positive sera were statistically lower than those of FOF. Two modalities of pooling (1:3 and 1:5) were tested for sera and FOF. For sera, both modalities did not impact the PRRSV-1 status either at the litter level or at the batch one. On the other hand, whatever the modality (pooled by 3 or 5), most of the pools of FOF gave negative results, misclassifying many litters and batches.

This retrospective study described the aetiologies of neonatal diarrhoea cases and their associations with histological findings. A total of 106 diarrhoeic neonatal piglets were selected. Cultures, MALDI typings, PCRs and evaluation of intestinal lesions were performed. A total of 51 cases (48.1%) were positive for only one pathogen and 54 (50.9%) were positive for more than one pathogen. Clostridium perfringens type A was the most frequently detected pathogen (61.3%), followed by Enterococcus hirae (43.4%), rotavirus type A (38.7%), rotavirus type C (11.3%) and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (3.8%). Only lesions in the small intestine were correlated with detected pathogens. The detection of rotavirus was associated with an increased probability of observing villous atrophy (p < 0.001), crypt hyperplasia (p = 0.01) and leucocyte necrosis in the lamina propria (p = 0.05). The detection of Clostridium perfringens type A was associated with an increased probability of observing bacilli in close proximity to the mucosa (p < 0.001) and a decreased probability of observing epithelial necrosis (p = 0.04). Detection of Enterococcus hirae was associated with an increased probability of observing enteroadherent cocci (p < 0.001). Multivariate regression logistic models revealed that epithelial necrosis was more likely to occur in Enterococcus hirae-positive piglets (p < 0.02) and neutrophilic infiltrate was more likely to occur in Clostridium perfringens type A- and Enterococcus hirae-positive piglets (p = 0.04 and p = 0.02, respectively).