spondylitis is a reemerging epidemic spinal infection in male broiler chickens (5 to 7 weeks of age) as well as broiler breeder roosters (15 to 18 weeks of age). among various causative agents, enterococcus species and in particular e. cecorum, a gram-positive bacterium as a gastrointestinal flora of birds, have mostly been isolated. on late september 2015, a number of 10 weeks old roosters wit...

Avian influenza is an important disease of poultry with the potential to cause major epidemics resulting in significant economic losses. The presence of avian influenza viruses (AIV) in chickens in Iran has not been previously reported. An avian influenza outbreak in broiler, layer and breeder farms occurred during a very hot summer in July 1998. Three AIV isolates designated as 101, 102 and 10...

The modern broiler and breeder are performing at levels never seen before. In order to multiply by 15x (or more) their bodyweight in just four weeks, they do not have the time to correct the effects of nutritional deficiencies. In a recently published paper coming from the University of Alberta, the effect of genetic selection was studied using unselected strains from 1957, 1978 and a 2005 comm...

The aim of the present work is to make a review on the literature concerning the incidence of some major pathologies of leg skeleton in broiler chickens and broiler breeders, related to poor animal welfare. On the basis of data on the incidence of leg skeletal pathology published by us and by other researchers, this review goes through some reports on femoral head necrosis (FHN), tibial dyschon...

1944 Vasotocin receptor mRNA expression in the brain and pituitary of broiler breeder hens. K. Shaffer*1, J.A. Vizcarra1, C.C. Hsu1, J.Y. Yang1, M.L. Rhoads1, L.E. Cornett2, D. Baeyens3, N. Ali3, and J.D. Kirby1, 1Department of Poultry Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, 2Department of Physiology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, 3Department of Biology, University of ...

The presence of salmonellae in fertile broiler hatching eggs has been clearly identified as a critical control point in the salmonellae contamination of broiler chickens. This paper reviews the published research studies on a) the penetration and proliferation of salmonellae in hatching eggs, b) the consequences of this contamination on the contamination of the final product, and c) the egg's d...

Mycoplasmas are important  avian  pathogens,  which  can  cause  both  respiratory  disease  and  synovitis  in  poultry  that  result  in  considerable  economic  losses  to  the  poultry  industry  all  over  the  world.  The  aim  of  this  study  was  to  determine  the  prevalence  of  Mycoplasma  gallisepticum  and  Mycoplasma  synoviae  infections  among  commercial  poultry  flocks  in ...

Eggshell fragments, paper pads from chick boxes, and fluff samples were obtained from three commercial primary breeder hatcheries and analyzed for the presence and level of salmonellae with identical laboratory methods in 1991 and 1998. Overall, 29 of 180 samples (16.1%) from the three hatcheries in 1998 were contaminated with salmonellae, whereas in 1991, 11.1% of the overall samples were foun...

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of breeder age and stocking density on performance, carcass characteristics and some stress parameters (H-L ratio, serum glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, tonic immobility test (TI), antibody production, relative asymmetry (RA) and external appearances). This experiment was carried out with 705 one-day old male broiler chicks (Ross ...