Prevalence of nasopharyngeal bacteria during naturally occurring bovine respiratory disease in commercial stocker cattle

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is one of the most common economic and health challenges to the beef cattle industry. Prophylactic use of antimicrobial drugs can alter the microbial communities in the respiratory tract. Considering that the bovine upper respiratory tract microbiome has been associated with generalized health, understanding the microenvironment that influences this microbiome may provide insights into the pathogenesis of BRD. This study aimed to determine temporal variation in nasopharyngeal (NP) microbiome in naturally occurring BRD in newly received stocker calves. Mixed breed steers ( n = 40) were purchased from an auction market and housed in a commercial stocker farm. Clinical signs were used to identify BRD affected animals, and calves were categorized based on the number of treatments (NumTrt) received (0, 1, 2). On days 0, 7, 14, and 21, NP samples were collected, and subsequent DNA were isolated and sequenced. After sequencing, 16S rRNA V4 gene was amplified and utilized for NP bacterial determination. The difference in relative abundance based on day and NumTrt was measured using repeated measures ANOVA (PROC GLIMMIX; SAS 9.4). Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota, Bacteroidota, and Verrucomicrobiota were the top phyla and Mycoplasma , Histophilus , Geobacillus , Saccharococcus , Lactobacillus , and Pasteurella were the top genera. In healthy calves, the relative abundance of Mycoplasma differed by day ( P = 0.01), whereas on day 7, calves had five times greater abundance compared to day 0 (d 0: 0.06 ± 0.05; d 7: 0.30 ± 0.05). No differences were observed in the alpha diversity matrices based on day or NumTrt ( P > 0.05). Results of this study suggest compositional variations in NP microbial populations occur during disease conditions.