various cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have suggested that synthetic bedding is associated with asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema while feather bedding seems to be protective. synthetic bedding items have higher house dust mite allergen levels than feather bedding items. this is possibly the mechanism involved although fungal and bacterial proinflammatory compounds and volatile org...

Introduction Marek’s disease, an economically-important lymphoid neoplasm of chickens, is caused by oncogenic strains of Marek’s disease herpesvirus (MDV). The virus replicates in lymphocytes and the epithelia of the skin and feather tissues (1). Despite very successful vaccination with attenuated virus strains, vaccine failures do occur as field viruses evolve towards greater virulence. In the...

A study was undertaken to assess the incidence of Marek’s Disease (MD) in vaccinated flocks. Blood, organ and feather follicle samples were collected from fifteen commercial layer farms in which Marek’s Disease outbreak was occurred even after vaccination with monovalent and bivalent vaccines. Blood samples were screened for serotype 1 specific132bp repeats and lymphocytes from corresponding po...

Severe feather pecking (SFP) is a behavioral disorder, for which there are multifactorial reasons. Various aspects of pullet and laying-hen husbandry—including housing conditions, management, feeding, genetics—must be considered, to prevent negative outcomes, such as severe plumage damage, skin injuries, high mortality rates due SFP. The aim this study was identify management factors in the occ...

We are interested in using retroviral vectors to trace cell lineage and to introduce exogenous genes in chicken skin explant cultures. Here the LZ10 virus carrying the gene encoding beta-galactosidase was introduced to the skin explants by two different means: a) the virus was added to the media or b) the virus was microinjected into regions of the developing feather buds. Infection by microinj...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary dilution sources and levels on feather damage, performance, feeding behavior, and litter condition in rearing pullets. It was hypothesized that dietary dilution increases feeding-related behavior and improves feather condition, particularly if insoluble nonstarch polysaccharides are used as the dilution source. In total, 864 Lohm...

Marek's disease virus (MDV) is an oncogenic alphaherpesvirus that is highly contagious in poultry. Recombinant RB-1B (rRB-1B) reconstituted from an infectious genome cloned as a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) is unable to spread horizontally, quite in contrast to parental RB-1B. This finding suggests the presence of one or several mutations in cloned relative to parental viral DNA. Seque...

(ab22285; Abcam Ltd., Cambridge, UK). Virus antigens were detected in feather epidermal cells from days 3 through 6 pi, and in a few stromal cells in the feather pulp on days 3 and 4 pi (online Appendix Figure, panel C). Our results indicate that larger amounts of viruses can be isolated for a longer time from feathers than from swabs. Therefore, feathers can be considered useful samples for su...

Marek's disease virus has a unique phosphoprotein, pp38, which is suspected to play an important role in Marek's disease pathogenesis. The objective of the present study was to utilize a mutant virus lacking the pp38 gene (rMd5Deltapp38) to better characterize the biological function of pp38. This work shows that the pp38 gene is necessary to establish cytolytic infection in B cells but not in ...