Reported in this paper is an experiment designed to evaluate responses of two commercial broiler dam purelines (A and B) continuously fed 10 or 300 IU of vitamin E/kg from 168 to 441 d of age. Prior to Day 168, all pullets were fed diets containing 10 IU of vitamin E/kg. During the early laying period, percentage hen-day ovulations and percentage hen-day normal egg production were similar for b...

Evidence suggests that the ability of an animal to maintain its immune system and (or) mount an immune response depends on its nutritional health and energetic condition. Migration is a period within an animal’s annual cycle when energetic condition varies, especially after a long, nonstop flight over a large ecological barrier. Our objective was to determine if measures of immune function in m...

The effect of heat stress on oxidative stress was studied in pigeons. Pigeons were either kept at thermo neutral room at 22 C, 24 hours/day or heat stress room at 34 C for 8 hours/day followed by 22 C for o o o the rest of the day during the 40 days experiment. Increased heterophils: lymphocyte ratio was evident indicating stress in pigeons. Parallel increase in leptin, metabolites and oxidativ...

Rapid separation of avian heterophils from anticoagulated whole blood was achieved using Ficoll-Hypaque discontinuous gradients. An average of 14.4% of blood heterophils was harvested with a mean purity exceeding 99%. Heterophil viability, as determined by trypan blue dye exclusion, averaged 99.8%. The integrity of isolated heterophils was evaluated by cytochemical staining and ultrastructural ...