2.2. Parasitological and Bacteriological Examination

Parasitological examination of the intestine was carried out resourcing to direct wet mount, sedimentation and filtration techniques. Liver, spleen and lung samples were analysed using standard bacteriological methods. Enterobacteriaceae and non-Enterobacteriaceae were tested using the ID 32E (Biomerieux^®, Lisbon, Portugal) test and the API 20NE kit (Biomerieux^®) test respectively. The presence of Streptococcus and Staphylococcus was investigates using the ID 32 STREPT (Biomerieux^®) and the ID 32 STAPH kits (Biomerieux^®), respectively. The API CORYNE (Biomerieux^®) kit was used for the identification of Corynebacteria and coryne-like organisms. For Salmonella, peptone water and Rappaport Vassiliadis semi solid culture media were used. Whenever there was a suspicion of Salmonella, the agarose SMID2 and XLD culture media were used. Other culture media for bacterial identification in the samples included the MacConkey agar and the Blood agar culture media.