The structure and properties of chicken feather barbs makes them unique fibers preferable for several applications. The presence of hollow honeycomb structures, their low density, high flexibility and possible structural interaction with other fibers when made into products such as textiles provides them unique properties unlike any other natural or synthetic fibers. No literature is available ...

Feather pecking in domestic fowl is a behavioral abnormality that consists of mild or injurious pecking at feathers of conspecifics. Previously, it was shown that chicks from a high feather-pecking (HFP) and low feather-pecking (LFP) line of laying hens already differ in their propensity to feather peck at 14 and 28 days of age. As a first step in investigating a possible relationship between t...

Potentially, pathogenic bacteria are one of the main infective agents against which a battery of chemical and physical barriers has evolved in animals. Among these are the secretions by the exocrine uropygial gland in birds. The antimicrobial properties of uropygial secretions may prevent colonization and growth of microorganisms on feathers, skin and eggshells. However, uropygial gland secreti...

It was previously suggested that the flight ability of feathered fossils could be hypothesized from the diameter of their feather rachises. Central to the idea is the unvalidated assumption that the strength of a primary flight feather (i.e. its material and structural properties) may be consistently calculated from the external diameter of the feather rachis, which is the only dimension that i...

UNLABELLED A study was conducted to establish the response of Pekin ducks to dietary Met from 15 to 35 d age. Experimental diets were formulated to contain 0.35, 0.45, 0.55, 0.65, and 0.75% Met (0.30, 0.39, 0.45, 0.56, and 0.68% on an analyzed basis, respectively) and 0.3% cysteine (0.25, 0.27, 0.26, 0.26, and 0.28% on an analyzed basis, respectively). Each diet was fed to 10 pens of 55 ducks/p...

Control measures are ineffective in curtailing Marek's disease virus (MDV) infection and replication in the feather follicle epithelium (FFE). Therefore, vaccinated birds which subsequently become infected with MDV, shed the virulent virus although they remain protected against disease. The present study investigated host responses generated against MDV infection in the feather. We observed tha...

The formation of periodic patterns is fundamental in biology. Theoretical models describing these phenomena have been proposed for feather patterning; however, no molecular candidates have been identified. Here we show that the feather tract is initiated by a continuous stripe of Shh, Fgf-4, and Ptc expression in the epithelium, which then segregates into discrete feather primordia that are mor...

Keratinolytic microorganisms have great importance in feather waste degradation and its use for improvement of livestock feed and production of protein hydrolysates. Bacillus altitudinis GVC11, a novel, raw chicken feather degrading bacterium, previously isolated and identified by morphological, biochemical and 16s rDNA sequencing in our laboratory, was used in the present study. It was grown i...

Introduction: Feathers are important body structures that act as surface insulators to reduce maintenance energy requirements and also to protect skin against abrasions and infection. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of methionine injection into the yolk sac on development of feather follicle in chicken embryo. Methods: 50 fertilized eggs (weighting 50±0.4 gr) of Ross×...

Typical (re)descriptions of feather mite species are based on characteristics of external morphology and of internal sclerotized structures visible in cleared specimens. We propose extending this standard by including sequence data of the cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene fragment (DNA barcode region chosen by the Consortium for the Barcode of Life). We describe a method of nondestructive DNA i...