Efeito de um composto de leveduras na incidência de diarreia em bezerras criadas em diferentes sistemas de alojamento

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of supplementation of a product composed of yeast culture and enzymatically hydrolyzed yeast on the incidence of diarrhea and on the body development of dairy calves submitted to different housing systems. One hundred and nineteen calves were used in two housing systems and randomly divided into two groups: yeast group (n = 62, 36 outdoors and 26 in the corral) and control group (n = 57, 30 outdoors and 27 in the corral). The yeast group was treated with 8 ml of yeast / animal culture, which was administered orally once daily for 42 days. The zootechnical measures were analyzed and the incidence of infectious diarrhea was monitored, blood and feces were also collected. The data were submitted to analysis of variance by repeated measures of the SAS Software, Tukey’s HSD and Chi-square test, being considered a statistical difference (p≤0.05). The animals in the control group raised outdoors had a higher incidence of diarrhea (80.00%) when compared to animals in the treatment group (55.55%) (p = 0.03). The period with the highest incidence of diarrhea (96.92%) was in the first 15 days of life (p <0.001). The bacteriological analysis of feces showed that 53.38% had Enterococcus sp. and 46.61% Eschechiria coli. after the diagnosis of diarrhea, both groups (control and yeast) presented leukocytosis. It is concluded that oral yeast supplementation for animals raised in the open was able to reduce the effects of the challenges caused by this system, decreasing the incidence of diarrhea.