On-farm biosecurity practices and causes of preweaning mortality in Canadian commercial mink kits.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Mink are an important animal commodity group in Canada and excessive kit mortality represents a significant loss to production. National biosecurity standards have been developed for Canadian mink farms, but it is unclear how well these standards have been implemented as there are no studies correlating management practices of mink producers with causes of death in mink kits. To that end, we surveyed Ontario mink producers on their biosecurity and management practices and conducted almost 5660 post mortem examinations on found-dead, preweaned kits to characterize mink farm biosecurity practices and causes of death in preweaned kits.

Results

We found that very few biosecurity and management practices were uniformly used by producers, despite good awareness of appro

SUBMITTER: Compo N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5591539 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature