Prevalence and characteristics of Pasteurella multocida in commercial turkeys

The oropharyngeal regions of 680 meat turkeys and 55 breeder turkeys from n ine outbreak farms, three history-outbreak farms, and 19 nonoutbreak farms in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania were cultured to determine the prevalenc e of Pasteurella multocida in turkeys. Pasteurella multocida was recovered from 32 out of 105 turkeys belonging to outbreak farms. Pasteurella multoci da was not recovered from either history-outbreak or nonoutbreak farms. Cha racterization via capsular and somatic serotyping, biotyping, restriction e ndonuclease analysis, and antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performe d on all recovered I! multocida isolates. Pasteurella multocida serotype A: 1 and somatic serotype 1 with an untypable capsular serogroup (UT:1) were t he most common serogroups found. All isolates belonged to biotype 1? multoc ida ssp. multocida. EcoRI, HpaII, and HindIII restriction enzyme digestions identified three, five, and five restriction fragment length polymorphism profiles, respectively. A majority of the isolates were susceptible to amik acin, ampicillin, ceftiofur, cephalothin, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, gentam icin, neomycin, novobiocin, oxacillin with 2% NaCl, sarafloxacin, tilmicosi n, and trimethoprim with sulphadiazine and resistant to clindamicin, penici llin, tiamulin, and tylosin.