Feathers do not have to be especially strong but they do need to be stiff and at the same time resilient and to have a high work of fracture. Syncitial barbule fibres are the highest size-class of continuous filaments in the cortex of the rachis of the feather. However, the rachis can be treated as a generalized cone of rapidly diminishing volume. This means that hundreds of syncitial barbule f...

Selection of an ideal sample is a vital element in early detection of influenza infection. Rapid identification of infectious individuals or animals is crucial not only for avian influenza virus (AIV) surveillance programmes, but also for treatment and containment strategies. This study used a combination of quantitative real-time RT-PCR with an internal positive control and a cell-titration sy...

A feather from the Eocene Messel Formation, Germany, has been demonstrated to have been originally structurally colored by densely packed sheets of melanosomes similar to modern iridescent feathers exhibiting thinfilm diffraction. The fossil itself currently exhibits a silvery sheen, but the mechanism for generating this optical effect was not fully understood. Here we use scanning electron mic...

Mercury concentrations, together with nitrogen and carbon stable isotope signatures, were determined in body feather samples from northern fulmars Fulmarus glacialis and great skuas Catharacta skua, and in different flight feathers from great skuas. There were no significant relationships between trophic status, as defined using isotope analysis, and mercury concentration in the same feather ty...

Understanding migratory connectivity for species of concern is of great importance if we are to implement management aimed at conserving them. New methods are improving our understanding of migration; however, banding (ringing) data is by far the most widely available and accessible movement data for researchers. Here, we use band recovery data for American black ducks (Anas rubripes) from 1951...

481 fresh fertilized eggs of three Kurdish local chickens (Black with brown neck, White with shank feathering, and White with non-feathering shank) were collected at pre-molting (355 eggs) and post-molting (126 eggs) stages to evaluate external egg traits. A venine caliper was used to determine the length and breadth of eggs to calculate Shape index. Results indicated that egg weight increased ...

Sexual dimorphism or dichromatism has long been considered the result of sexual selection. However, for many organisms the degree to which sexual dichromatism occurs has been determined within the confines of human perception. For birds, objective measures of plumage color have revealed previously unappreciated sexual dichromatism for several species. Here we present an unbiased assessment of p...

Numbers of Campylobacter detected on broiler carcasses decrease due to scalding but rebound during defeathering. Earlier research indicated that escape of gut contents during defeathering is an important contributor to the increase in Campylobacter numbers, whereas aerosols created by feather picking machines are not. The objective of this study was to determine if contact with surfaces in natu...

Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli are the leading causes of enteric infections in many developed countries. Healthy chickens are considered to act as reservoirs of campylobacters, as the organisms colonize the intestinal tract. Once infected birds enter a processing plant, contamination of chicken carcasses with campylobacters occurs over the entire skin during defeathering and evisceration due ...

Feather pecking in laying hens is a major welfare and production problem for commercial egg producers, resulting in mortality, loss of production as well as welfare issues for the damaged birds. Damaging outbreaks of feather pecking are currently impossible to control, despite a number of proposed interventions. However, the ability to predict feather damage in advance would be a valuable resea...