BACTERIOLOGICAL STUDIES ON MYCOPLASMA MICROORGANISMS IN SHEEP AND GOATS

Abstract

Examination of 2910 samples collected from living, slaughtered or dead apparently healthy or diseased sheep and goats revealed the isolation of 375 mycoplasmal isolates with the incidence of 12.88% according to the digitonin sensitivity, the isolated strains were differentiated to 358 (95.46%) isolates were sensitive to digitonin, i.e. mycoplasma and 17 (4.53%) resistant to digitonin, i.e. acholeplasma which were recovered from sheep (5) and goat (12).

The 358 mycoplasma strains were classified biochemically to

4 biogroups, 250 strains (66.66%) belonged to biogroup I, 15 strains (4.00%) to biogroup II, 32 strains (8.53%) belonged to biogroup III and I 06 strains belonged to biogroup IV.

The serotyping of these 358 biochemically identified mycoplasma strains by growth inhibition test revealed the typing of 82 (22.90%) into the following 3 specics:-

46 M. mycoides var capri (12.26%), 27M ovi pneumoniae (7.2%) and 9 M agalactiae var agalactiae (2.4%), M mycoides var capri was isolated only from goats and not from sheep, while the reverse in case of M ovipneumoniae which isolated from sheep only.