Shipping fever pneumonia in yearling feedlot cattle

During each week of 1974, we surveyed, for illnesses and deaths, a continually changing population of yearling feedlot cattle that, for the year, totaled 407,000 animals. About 5.1% of the cattle sickened and, of these, 18.9% died. From the 3,943 fatalities, 1,988 necropsies were made. About 75% of the clinical diagnoses and 64% of the necropsy diagnoses were respiratory tract diseases; of the fatalities from respiratory tract diseases, 75% were attributed to shipping fever pneumonia. Nearly 72% of fatal cases of shipping fever pneumonia occurred during the first 45 days on feed. In the lungs of most cattle with shipping fever pneumonia, bronchiolitis, fibrinous exudate, colonies of microorganisms, lymphatic clots, intravascular clots, thromboses, and foci of necrosis were found. Pasteurella spp, Mycoplasma spp, and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus were isolated from pneumonic tissues. It was hypothesized that pathogenic Pasteurella spp and other microorganisms in nasal secretions transfer from the nasopharynx into the lungs by draining along the tracheal floor into ventral bronchi, bronchioles, and alveoli, and that pasteurella endotoxin, formed in infected lobules, thromboses and occludes lymphatics, capillaries, and veins and thereby causes ischemic necrosis.