Background: It is unknown if gastrointestinal dysbiosis in diarrheic calves causes disease or is a consequence of the disease.
Objectives: Describe the fecal microbiota of calves before, during, and after recovering from diarrhea.
Animals: Fifteen female Holstein calves of 0 to 21 days old from a single farm.
Neonatal calf diarrhea is the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality globally. The changes associated with the gastrointestinal microbiota in neonatal calves experiencing diarrhea and its etiology are not fully understood or completely defined in the literature. Several studies have demonstrated that the fecal microbiota of calves that experience diarrhea substantially deviates from that of healthy age-matched calves.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The effect of time of sample collection after onset of diarrhea on the fecal microbiota composition of calves is unknown.
Objective: Compare the fecal microbiota of calves with diarrhea onset on the day of sampling (D <24h), and calves having had diarrhea for >24 to 48 hours (D 24-48h).
Animals: Thirty-one diarrheic calves (20 D <24h and 11 D 24-48h), 3 to 7 days of age.