Nasal and gut microbiota for sows of different health status within six commercial swine farms from one swine production system

Sow culling is an essential practice in swine herds to optimize animal health andproductivity; and cull sows represent a considerable proportion of the herd at any giventime point. Even though recent studies have reported that the microbiome isassociated with susceptibility to diseases, the microbiome in the cull sow populationhas not been explored. The main objective of this study was to investigate whetherthere were differences in abundance and diversity of microbes encountered in the gutand upper respiratory tract of sows of different health status (healthy, cull, andcompromised cull sows) and different farms. Farms were visited once, 30 individualfecal and nasal swab samples were obtained per farm; and pooled across animals byhealth status and farm in pools of five. Genomic DNA was extracted and samples weresubjected to MiSeq 16S rRNA sequencing using Illumina MiSeq.