The world's most numerous bird, the domestic chicken, and their wild ancestor, the red junglefowl, have long been used as model species for animal behaviour research. Recently, this research has advanced our understanding of the social behaviour, personality, and cognition of fowl, and demonstrated their sophisticated behaviour and cognitive skills. Here, we overview some of this research, star...

HE lack of an ancestral “standard of reference”, “normal” or “wild type” T for use in genetic studies of the domestic fowl has been of little concern to many poultry geneticists (for a recent discussion of this topic see JAAP and HOLLANDER 1954). In the field of plumage color inheritance, however, a standard of reference seems necessary in describing the action of mutant genes. What the standar...

Poultry birds. Domestic fowl and broiler are constantly in exposure of both ecto-parasites and endoparasites. The parasitic infestation badly affect the industry in various ways, low weight birds, meat with low quality in taste and nutrients, weight reduction etc. The present study shows that broiler bird is less infected by ecto-parasites and gastrointestinal; parasites as compared to domestic...

Fowl pox is a viral disease of domestic and wild birds. The large size of the genome makes it a useful vector for recombinant DNA technology. Although the disease has been described in both commercial and indigenous chickens in Nigeria, data are limited on seroprevalence in free range chickens. Such data are, however, important in the design and implementation of fowl pox virus vector vaccine. ...

Hundreds of viruses, bacteria, and protozoa require a parasitic arthropod for transmission between vertebrate hosts. The failure of many conventional methods of vector-borne disease control has lead modern research to consider biological control methods. Lyme disease is a potentially debilitating condition that has caused many people to seek an effective means of protecting themselves from tick...

The MHC class I gene was amplified, cloned and sequenced in guinea fowl using the primers specific to BF2 gene in chicken. The nucleotide sequence of 571 bp partial CDS of BF2 gene includes 32 nucleotides of signal peptide (exon 1), complete " domain (270 nucleotides) and 269 nucleotides of " 1 2 domain. For " and " domain no sequence variation was observed within guinea fowl sequences, however...

Fowl typhoid is a disease of adult chickens and is caused by Salmonella Gallinarum infection via the alimentary tract. The experimental reproduction of fowl typhoid per os (PO) requires artificial conditions to minimize the effect of gastric acid, and several Salmonella serovars have been known to be transmitted via the respiratory route. Therefore, we have hypothesized the existence of a respi...

This study was conducted to describe the growth pattern of the French guinea fowl, a meat-type variety. Using BW data from hatch to 9 wk, 2 nonlinear mathematical functions (Gompertz and logistic) were used to estimate growth patterns of the French guinea fowl. The French guinea fowl did not exhibit sexual dimorphism for growth characteristics. From the Gompertz model, the asymptotic BW, growth...

The prevalence and geographic distribution of the fowl tampan, Argas walkerae Kaiser & Hoogstraal, 1969 was determined in the eastern region of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa by inspecting two fowl houses in the vicinity of each of 72 randomly selected communal cattle dip-tanks. Tampans were collected from 102 (70.8%) of the 144 fowl houses in the neighbourhood of 57 (79.2%) of the 72 ...

The tick burdens of 10 crowned guinea fowl (Numida meleagris), shot at approximately 3-monthly intervals in the Mountain Zebra National Park, and of 21 crowned guinea fowl from the Andries Vosloo Kudu Reserve, the majority of which were shot at monthly intervals, were determined. No adult ticks were recovered from any of the guinea fowl. The birds in the Mountain Zebra National Park harboured 4...