Introduction:

Reproduction of cattle is affected by several infectious deseases, among which leptospirosis, brucellosis, campylobacteriosis, bovine viral diarrhea, and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis are found. These infectious deseases cause economic losses to the cattle industry. The objective was to determine the prevalence of five species of Leptospira: hardjo, inifap, paloalto, tarassovi and wolffi in seven ranches from the State of Veracruz, as well as, the odds ratios among the prevalence of the ranches. An additional objective was to determine whether the gestation rate is affected by the presence of Leptospires.

Method:

The ranches were located in three municipalities: San Rafael, Medellín and Cotaxtla. Blood samples were taken from Bos taurus x Bos indicus cows. The serologic analyses to determine the presence of Leptospires were carried out with the microscopic agglutination test. Animals with titles greater than 1:100 were considered positives. The prevalence analyses were performed with the GENMOD procedure of SAS, considering a completely randomized design, where the risk factor was ranch, and assuming a logit link function for a binomial distribution. The analysis of the gestation rate was carried out with the same procedure, assuming the same link function, but the model included the effects of sanitary status (presence/absence of Leptospires) and ranch.

Results:

The ranch variable was significant (P<0.001) for the prevalence of L. hardjo, L. paloalto and L. tarassovi, but not (P>0.05) for that of L. inifap and L. wolffi. Means of prevalence were: 89.3, 67.1, 40.0, 15.9 and 10.0% for L. inifap, L. hardjo, L. paloalto, L. tarassovi and L. wolffi, respectively. Sanitary status and ranch did not affect (P>0.05) the gestation rate. The mean gestation rate of the seven ranches was 50.5%.

Discussion or Conclusion:

The results obtained in the present study showed that the five species of Leptospira evaluated were present in all of the sampled ranches of the three municipalities of the center zone of the State of Veracruz. inifap was the most common species of Leptospira in cattle of the studied region, followed by hardjo.