Occurrence and Characterization of Salmonella Isolated from Large-Scale Breeder Farms in Shandong Province, China

This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and antimicrobial resistance of Salmonella spp. isolated from large-scale breeder farms in Shandong Province, China. A total of 63 Salmonella isolates (63/409, 15.4%) were identified from 409 samples collected from five large-scale breeder farms in Shandong Province. These Salmonella isolates were assayed for serotype, antimicrobial susceptibility, prevalence of class 1 integrons, quinolone resistance genes, and β-lactamase genes and subtyped by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Among these isolates, S. Enteritidis (100%) was the predominant serovar, and high antimicrobial resistance rates to nalidixic acid (100.0%), streptomycin (100.0%), ampicillin (98.4%), and erythromycin (93.7%) were observed. All of the isolates carried blaTEM. MLST results showed that only one sequence type (ST11) was identified. Our findings indicated that Salmonella was generally prevalent not only on broiler farms but also on breeder farms.