A Review of the Etiological Factors Associated With the Bovine Respiratory System

Abstract

Like all researchers I have certain biases. I'm biased towards the organisms I work with and becaue I wasn't here to join in the BYD festivities yesterday, I will try to rebutt a little bit and point out that maybe there is something besides BYD causing respiratory disease or predisposition to bacterial pneumonias. Let us go down the list of infectious agents of bovine respiratory disease. Many people feel that
bacteria are probably the things that make all the other ones important because maybe without bacteria we would not end up with pneumonias that kill animals or make them do poorly for life. But, maybe without the viruses we would not have the predisposition or a lot of the predisposition that allow the bacteria to get where they can do that kind of damge. Mycoplasmas and on down the list, a big question mark in many ways and yet we'll talk about those at greater length later on. I've left the protozoa off this list. I don't know that there is any solid evidence that the one protozoan frequently isolated from lung is of any economic importance and I do not include parasites here because I don't know much about them.