Self-administration of a Salmonella vaccine by domestic pigs.

ABSTRACT: Hand vaccinating is time consuming and inefficient. Oral vaccines delivered by drenching are less likely to be used due to a lack of labor on farms. Current environmental enrichment (EE) technologies do not allow pigs to express certain natural behaviors such as rooting and getting a reward. We developed a sprayer so that domestic pigs can self-apply any liquid. By adding an attractant (pig maternal pheromone), the use of EE devices by individual pigs can be increased. In this study, we used a Salmonella oral vaccine to evaluate efficacy of three delivery methods: (1) Control, no vaccine, (2) hand drenching as labeled, and (3) self-administration by this EE rooting device. All pigs sprayed themselves within 80 min of exposure to the EE device. While control pigs had little or no Salmonella

SUBMITTER: Robbins RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9941462 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature