Social stress and resistance of chicken and swine to Staphylococcus aureus challenge infections.

The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of social stress on the susceptibility of chickens and swine to Staphylococcus aureus infection. Chickens were housed under four levels of social stress. Weaned pigs remained with their litter or were housed separately. One day after some birds were placed in the high stressed environments all were challenged intravenously with S. aureus. Susceptibility was characterized by joint infection in swine and reduced weight gain in chickens. Chickens which were moved into the high stressed environments before challenge lost weight while the controls gained weight (P less than 0.001). During the three days postchallenge the most severely stressed chickens lost less than half as much body weight as did the least stressed (P less than 0.001). During the post-challenge period chickens selected for high corticosterone response in a high social stress gained weight while chickens selected for a low corticosterone response in a low stress environment lost weight (P less than 0.0001). Swine housed under a reduced level of stress (social) were more susceptible to S. aureus than those kept under higher levels of stress (P = 0.0001).