Mortality in commercial nurseries can be due to various causes. Clostridium perfringens Type A, a normal inhabitant of the intestinal microflora, is recognized as a cause of neonatal enteritis (1-5), but is less well known as a cause of mortality in nursery pigs. Olubunmi and Taylor isolated C. perfringens Type A from the intestines of 12 suckling piglets and 11 weaned and adult pigs, some of which had died of profuse diarrhea (6). Jestin et al. described a diarrheic syndrome with high morbidity andlow mortality attributed to C. perfringens enterotoxin in feeder pigs (7). Until now, Clostridium perfringens Type A had not been identified as a cause of sudden death, in the absence of prior clinical signs, in nursery pigs. The purpose of this paper isto present a case history of sudden deaths attributed to Clostridium perfringens Type A in a commercial nursery.
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