REGULAR ARTICLES Establishment of lung auscultation scoring method and responses of acute phase proteins and heat shock proteins in vaccinated and non-vaccinated goats Faez Firdaus Abdullah Jesse 1,2 & Eric Lim Teik Chung 3 & Yusuf Abba 1,4 & Kalai Vaani Muniandy 1 & Ahmad Hafizin Ahmad Ramizi Tan 1 & Dharshini Maslamany 1 & Asinamai Athliamai Bitrus 5 & Mohd Azmi Mohd Lila 6 & Mohd Jefri Norsidin 1 Received: 13 May 2018 /Accepted: 27 July 2018 # Springer Nature B.V. 2018 Abstract Pneumonic pasteurellosis is an economically important infectious disease in the small ruminant industry which causes sudden death and loss for farmers. Nonetheless, this disease is still a common sight in sheep and goats in Malaysia, probably due to the unpopular usage of pasteurellosis vaccine or inappropriate vaccination practices. The aim of this study was designed to classify the severity of pneumonia via the establishment of auscultation scoring method and to quantify the acute phase proteins and heat shock proteins responses from vaccinated and non-vaccinated goats. Goat farms, consist of vaccinated and non-vaccinated farms, were selected in this study: where 15 clinically normal healthy goats and 9 pneumonic goats were selected from vaccinated farms whereas 15 clinically normal healthy goats and 31 pneumonic goats from non-vaccinated farms were selected for this study. Crackle lung sounds were not detected in both vaccinated and non-vaccinated normal goats. However, vaccinated pneumonic goats showed mild crackle lung sound while non-vaccinated pneumonic goats exhibited moderate crackle lung sound. There were significant increases (p < 0.05) in acute phase proteins and heat shock proteins concentrations for the non-vaccinated pneumonic goats group. In this study, conclusion can be made that the vaccinated goats exhibited very mild clinical responses of pneumonia and non-significant biomarker responses compared to the non-vaccinated goats. Thus, vaccination is an effective preventive measure to control pneumonic pasteurellosis and acute phase proteins and heat shock proteins can be considered as future biomarkers in screening and rapid diagnostic method for this particular disease. Keywords Pneumonic pasteurellosis . Mannheimia haemolytica . Vaccination . Auscultation . Acute phase proteins . Heat shock proteins . Goats Introduction Pneumonia refers to an inflammatory response of the bronchi- oles and alveoli in the lungs due to infective agents, which causes the consolidation of the lung tissue (El-Deeb and Tharwat 2015). Pneumonic pasteurellosis or respiratory mannheimiosis is the most common respiratory disease with a wide prevalence in small ruminants (Marru et al. 2013). This * Faez Firdaus Abdullah Jesse jesse@upm.edu.my 1 Department of Veterinary Clinical Studies, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 2 Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Food Security, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 3 Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 4 Department of Veterinary Pathology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Maiduguri, Maiduguri, Borno P.M.B 1069, Nigeria 5 Research Unit, Microbial Food Safety and Antimicrobial Resistance, Department of Veterinary Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand 6 Department of Veterinary Pathology and Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia Tropical Animal Health and Production https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-018-1683-7