More than 8.5 billion chickens are slaughtered for meat production in the United States every year. Raised in industrial production systems, these animals experience crowded indoor confinement, unnatural lighting regimes, poor air quality, stressful handling and transportation, and inadequate stunning and slaughter procedures. Because they are selectively bred for rapid growth, broiler chickens...

Chicken sera containing IgG antibodies specific for the 32 000 (32K) mol. wt. structural polypeptide of infectious bursal disease (IBD) virus, as assessed by Western blotting, neutralized the in vitro infectivity of tissue culture-adapted IBD virus. When injected into young chickens, the serum passively protected them from challenge with pathogenic IBD virus. Chickens immunized with the 32K str...

Tetanus toxoid (TT) was assessed as a positive marker for avian influenza (AI) virus vaccination in chickens, in a vaccination and challenge study. Chickens were vaccinated twice with inactivated AI H5N2 virus vaccine, and then challenged three weeks later with highly pathogenic AI H5N1 virus. Vaccinated chickens were compared with other groups that were either sham-vaccinated or vaccinated wit...

To evaluate risk factors for infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza A virus (H5N1) in backyard chickens in Bangladesh, we conducted a matched case-control study. We enrolled 25 case farms (cases March-November 2007) and 75 control farms (June-November 2007). We used a questionnaire to collect farm data, which were analyzed by matched-pair analysis and multivariate conditional logistic...

The aim of this study was to count, isolate and identify by traditional methods the major bacteria colonizing the intestinal tract of organic and conventional chickens. The study was performed in 2 conventional and 2 organic chicken farms. Intestinal samples (24 from ileum and 24 from caecum) were collected from organic reared chickens during the production cycle (40 days of age) and at slaught...

A practical class using clicker training of chickens to apply knowledge of how animals learn and practice skills in animal training was added to an undergraduate course. Since attitudes to animals are related to their perceived intelligence, surveys of student attitudes were completed pre- and post- the practical class, to determine if (1) the practical class changed students' attitudes to chic...

Objective To investigate antibiotic use in poultry farms in Thailand and estimate the total amount of antibiotics used annually in Thai production of chicken meat. Methods In a single province, we surveyed eight farms in which chickens were raised for meat and interviewed the farms' owners in 2016. The antibiotic use for each chicken was defined as the amount of antibiotic given to the chicke...

This study aimed to investigate the effect of mannose-binding lectin (MBL) on infections with Escherichia coli in chickens. Initially, the basic levels of MBL in 4 different lines of layer chickens, namely ISA Brown, Lohmann Selected Leghorn, Lohmann Braun, and Hellevad, were investigated. This investigation revealed a 2-to 3-fold difference in the basic levels of MBL in serum between some of t...

The objective of this study was to determine if a diet supplemented simultaneously with vitamins C and E would alleviate the negative effects of heat stress, applied between 28 and 42 days of age, on performance, carcass and meat quality traits of broiler chickens. A total of 384 male broiler chickens were assigned to a completely randomized design, with a 2×3 factorial arrangement (diet with o...