Abstract
1) A cow a month before parturition was injected, hyperdermic and intramuscular, with antipertussis vaccine. The total dose of 1, 580 billion was divided into increasing 10 portions and injected at 3-day intervals.
2) Agglutination tests of the experimental cow serum with pertussis (10 billion) were positive in dilution of 1: 2 before the vaccination, as compared to 1: 2, 560 after the vaccination. The value on the control cow serum was 1: 4.
3) The agglutination test with pertussis was positive at 1.7γ/ml in whey nitrogen content of the immune colostrum and at 30γ/ml of the control colostrum.
The antibody titer of the control colostrum decreased daily, and gave negative agglutination after 3 days of the lactation. The immune milk gave positive values at 1.7γ/ml even after a week in the experimental period.
4) The daily decreasing in antibody titer of blood and milk was not affected by the additional vaccination, which was given in the immunized cow after the parturition with the total amount of 7, 765 billion of pertussis bacilli divided into 20 doses.
5) The serum of the immunized calf or the control cow caused negative or weakly positive agglutination reaction at delivery.
After the calves fed on dam's colostrum, the calf serum of control dam caused the positive reaction at 1: 1 to 2; and the calf serum of immunized dam showed an immediate increase in serum antibody and gave the positive reaction at about 1: 4, 000.
6) The results apparently indicate that the calves acquire the immune agglutinin in blood just after the feeding on colostrum, and they are not able to absorb the immune agglutinins from dam's blood, even at high concentration in antibody, during their gestation period.
7) A calf 2 months postpartum fed on the immune normal milk for a week showed an increased serum antibody by 60 times.
