Low pathogenic Avian Influenza (AI) virus has the ability to evolve to high pathogenic viruses resulting in significant economic losses in the poultry sector. This study aims at assessing the impact of H9N2 viral passaging in broilers and its relatedness to pathogenicity and amino acid (a.a) sequences of the hemagglutinin (HA) cleavage site and neuraminidase (NA) stalk. The original H9N2 AI vir...

Feed ingredient costs have been a concern to the U.S. broiler industry. Some integrated operations have reduced apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn ) values to decrease live production costs. Our laboratory has previously determined that 36 to 47 d feed conversion and caloric conversion were optimized with broilers fed diets formulated at 3,200 kcal/ kg. Finishing broilers may respond to diets ...

Direct fed microbials and probiotics are used to promote health in livestock and poultry; however, their mechanism of action is still poorly understood. We previously reported that direct fed microbial supplementation in young broilers reduced ileal respiration without changing whole-body energy expenditure. The current studies were conducted to further investigate the effects of a direct fed m...

Experiments were conducted to determine the digestible lysine (DLys) requirement of Liuzhou Mahua broilers from 1 to 21 d and from 22 to 42 d of age. Monofactorial design was adopted in this study. 1200 one-day-old healthy broiler chicks were divided randomly and evenly into five treatments, and were all fed with isoenergetic diet (with ME of 3.0 Mcal/kg) but with graded levels of DLys: 1.22%, ...

Bacterial chondronecrosis with osteomyelitis (BCO) and turkey osteomyelitis complex (TOC) are characterized by bacterial infection and necrotic degeneration within the tibiae and femora. Stress and immunosuppression have been implicated in the pathogenesis of BCO and TOC. Immunosuppressive doses of dexamethasone (DEX) trigger high incidences of TOC in turkey poults. The present study was conduc...

BACKGROUND Enterococcus cecorum is considered as an emerging pathogen in poultry and can cause substantial losses in broiler flocks. Femoral head necrosis and spondylitis were described as the main pathological changes in infected chickens. Nevertheless, little is known about the pathogenesis of Enterococcus cecorum infection in broilers. This report shows for the first time the whole course of...

This study was aimed to determine the alkaline phosphatase activity following time course (days) in the intestine of broilers. We used a sample of 54 subjects of broilers from hatching period to 56th day of age. Our finding showed a significant increase in the alkaline phosphatase activity at various levels in the different intestinal segments during the first two weeks of life and then decreas...

Two hundred and forty male Cobb broilers were used to study the reasons of causing ascites. The results showed that cold ambient temperature could induce ascites (33.89% vs. 2.50%) and significantly increase triiodothyronine (T3), but reduce thyroxine (T4) concentrations in plasma (p<0.05). The ascitic broilers had high concentrations of aldosterone and K , but low concentrations of T3 and T4 i...