Bilcik, B. and L. J. Keeling (1999). "Changes in feather condition in relation to feather pecking and aggressive behaviour in laying hens." British Poultry Science 40(4): 444-451. 1. The aim of this experiment was to describe and examine the relationship between pecks received by individual birds and the feather and skin damage of those birds at different ages. The effect of group size was also...

A keratinolytic enzyme secreted by Aspergillus flavus K-03 cultured in feather meal basal medium (FMBM) containing 2% (w/v) chicken feather was purified and characterized. Keratinolytic enzyme secretion was the maximal at day 16 of the incubation period at pH 8 and 28℃. No relationship was detected between enzyme yield and increase of fungal biomass. The fraction obtained at 80% ammonium sulfat...

Muffs and beard (Mb) is a phenotype in chickens where groups of elongated feathers gather from both sides of the face (muffs) and below the beak (beard). It is an autosomal, incomplete dominant phenotype encoded by the Muffs and beard (Mb) locus. Here we use genome-wide association (GWA) analysis, linkage analysis, Identity-by-Descent (IBD) mapping, array-CGH, genome re-sequencing and expressio...

This paper assesses the ability of strains of Aphanoascus fulvescens and Chrysosporium articulatum isolated from soil (phaesol) to degrade native feather keratin. Strains were identified based on phenotypic traits and nucleotide sequencing. Response Surface Methodology was used to optimize cultivation conditions exhibiting the highest keratinolytic activity. The experiments were based on Box-Be...

Abstract This study aims to evaluate the capability of extracellular protease hydrolyze keratin substrates local poultry feathers and observing amino acid profile. The indigenous strains ( Bacillus cereus TD5B, LS2B, Pseudomonas sp. PK4) were used in this study, obtained data analysed descriptively. TD5B has a maximum activity at 0.003849062 unit/ml 0.000310042 on casein commercial substrates. ...

The effect of rearing with and without perches on the spatial ability of domestic hens (Gallus gallus domesticus) was investigated. No access or late access to perches during rearing has been shown to increase the later prevalence of floor eggs and cloacal cannibalism in loose-housed laying hens. This may be explained by either the birds reared without perches have difficulty using perches due ...

Optimization of chicken feather (CF) based culture medium for the production of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis (Bti) biomass in combination with the agro industrial by-product (coconut cake, CC) and manganese chloride (MnCl2) has been evaluated. The biomass yield of Bti spore/crystal toxin was highest (12.06 g/L) from the test medium (CF+CC+MnCl2) compared to the reference medium (Lu...

BACKGROUND Converging evidence from different species indicates that some newborn vertebrates, including humans, have visual predispositions to attend to the head region of animate creatures. It has been claimed that newborn preferences for faces are domain-relevant and similar in different species. One of the most common criticisms of the work supporting domain-relevant face biases in human ne...

A case of oviductal volvulus, a rare disorder with oviductal cyst as a possible aetiology, is described in an 11-month-old Nera black chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). The condition was observed during routine postmortem examination of 550 carcasses from a flock of 16,100 birds between September 2005 and June 2006. The affected portion of the oviduct and the cyst twisted almost 360 degrees cl...

To elucidate the genes involved in the formation of white and black plumage in ducks, RNA from white and black feather bulbs of an F(2) population were analyzed using RNA-Seq. A total of 2,642 expressed sequence tags showed significant differential expression between white and black feather bulbs. Among these tags, 186 matched 133 annotated genes that grouped into 94 pathways. A number of genes...