Antibiotic treatment of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae in domestic sheep (Ovis aries) : Working at the livestock-wildlife interface in Yukon, Canada.

Domestic sheep can carry the bacterium in their upper respiratory tract, often with little effect on health and productivity. However, for bighorn sheep populations, there is a link between infection and pneumonia, poor lamb recruitment, and high fatality rate. Because of these outcomes, preventing transmission of to free-ranging wild sheep has garnered interest from both the livestock and wildlife sectors. We hypothesized that treatment with intranasal and systemic enrofloxacin would reduce the prevalence of -positive animals in a flock of domestic sheep. Initially, the prevalence decreased in the treated group; but by 34 d post-treatment, the number of -positive sheep returned to near pretreatment prevalence. Key clinical message: Test-and-slaughter is a method used to reduce the risk of transmission of pneumonia-causing from domestic sheep and goats to free-ranging wild sheep. In an effort to find an alternative, we used enrofloxacin to treat a flock of -positive domestic sheep; however, long-term reduction of prevalence in the flock was not achieved.