In Germany alone, respiratory infections in pigs fattening farms cause losses of millions of Euros. These economic losses are attributed less to total losses due to the death of pigs, but much more to costs for treatment and indirect costs caused by diminished mast and breeding results. The earlier infected animals are detected, the more promising treatments and means to reduce the risk of infection are. Therefore it is necessary to distinguish between coughs from healthy pigs, simple throat cleaning, and coughs by infected pigs. This paper shows that this is automatically possible, and that even the kind of infection can be distinguished. Methods and procedures applied are mainly adapted from those which successfully have been proved in human speech recognition.