Wild birds carry similar Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium strains to those found in domestic animals and livestock.

The objective of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that some sporadic Salmonella infections in domesticated animals may be associated with Salmonella infections originating from garden birds. Phage type and antimicrobial resistance details of isolates of S. Typhimurium obtained from wild birds were comparable with those from S. Typhimurium infections from domesticated animals or livestock between 2002 and 2010. A small panel of S. Typhimurium isolates (n=37) were characterised by multilocus variable number of tandem repeats analysis (MLVA), pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and phage type. The MLVA-PFGE data clustered the strains according to phage type (DT40 or DT56). Within each group there were strains from wild birds and domesticated animals or livestock with MLVA profiles having up to 100% similarity. The results from this study therefore lend support to the hypothesis that Salmonella infections in domesticated animals could be caused by infections carried by wild birds.