Poultry litter usage in horticultural crop production is a contributor to nuisance fly populations, in particular stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans L.) and house flies (Musca domestica L.). Extrapolation of adult emergence data suggests that approximately 1.5 million house flies and 0.2 million stable flies are emerging on average from every hectare of poultry litter applied as a preplant ferti...

Measureable rates of genome evolution are well documented in human pathogens but are less well understood in bacterial pathogens in the wild, particularly during and after host switches. Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) is a pathogenic bacterium that has evolved predominantly in poultry and recently jumped to wild house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus), a common North American songbird. For the firs...

We compared the frequencies of non-synonymous, synonymous and non-protein coding SNPs in the House Finch and poultry populations by comparing three groups of SNPs. The first type were polymorphisms that likely arose in the House Finch MG lineage, as they are fixed in the poultry MG strains but are polymorphic amongst the House Finch ones. The second group are those SNPs that likely arose in the...

This study examined constraints and adoption in poultry production in the Northern Agricultural Zone of Delta State, Nigeria. A sample size of 80 respondents comprising of Supervisors of selected farms was used for the study. Data were collected through the use of a structured and validated questionnaire. Data were collected in March 2017. Descriptive statistics such as frequency count, mean sc...

While direct contact may sometimes be sufficient to allow a pathogen to jump into a new host species, in other cases fortuitously adaptive mutations that arise in the original donor host are also necessary. Viruses have been the focus of most host shift studies, so less is known about the importance of ecological versus evolutionary processes to successful bacterial host shifts. Here we tested ...

Viral and bacterial pathogens are a significant economic concern to the US broiler industry and the ecological epicenter for poultry pathogens is the mixture of bedding material, chicken excrement and feathers that comprises the litter of a poultry house. This study used high-throughput sequencing to assess the richness and diversity of poultry litter bacterial communities, and to look for conn...

Poultry are known to harbor antibiotic resistant and pathogenic bacteria, and as such poultry litter and poultry house air can be contaminated with these bacteria. However, the presence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in biological aerosols and litter is largely not understood. The purpose of this study was to determine the amount of aerosolized bacteria and endotoxin, particularly fecal indic...

F i l t h fly control on poultry facilities in California is not limited to the house fly but also includes the little house fly. In fact, the little house fly, Fannia canicularis (L.), is of greater economic importance to poultry producers than the house fly, Musca domestica L., mainly because it occurs during the cool and wet season, when standard manure-drying practices are not always reliab...

Analysis of field data collected over several years in three poultry housing systems (narrow caged-layer houses, high-rise caged-layer houses, and broiler-breeder layer houses) indicated that the baited jug-trap was a reliable method of sampling house flies, Musca domestica L.; sticky ribbons provided additional information on two other fly species. Relative frequency of house fly capture indic...

Many arthropods inhabit caged-layer poultry manure, including pest and beneficial species. The primary pests are the house fly, Musca domestica L., and the darkling beetle, Alphitobius diaperinus (Panzer). The house fly is ubiquitous and rapidly infests newly accumulating poultry manure, often reaching enormous numbers. Flies pester farm workers, birds, and when emigration occurs, neighbors. Th...