A study was undertaken to investigate the prevalence of endoparasites of wild ostriches at Mokolodi Nature Reserve, Gaborone, over a 7-month period. Large numbers of strongyle eggs were recovered from faecal material in April and September and a decline in the strongyle egg counts was evident during June and July. Noteworthy was the absence of helminth eggs in faecal samples collected from chic...

BACKGROUND Mycoplasma synoviae is an important avian pathogen which can cause both respiratory disease and synovial joint inflammation (synovitis) in poultry. Mycoplasmas spp. may cause the respiratory system infection in ostriches with symptoms such as inflammation of the nose, trachea and also damages of lungs. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to use the M. synoviae specific Polymerase Ch...

Scientific knowledge of ostrich diseases is incomplete and very fragmented, with specific details on technical aspects of diagnostic and/or screening tests completely absent in most cases. Salmonella Typhimurium is common in multispecies collections and causes mortality in chicks younger than three months on commercial farms, but is rarely found in chicks older than six months, or slaughter bir...

Microsporidia are ubiquitous parasites infecting all animal phyla and we present evidence that supports their zoonotic potential. Fecal samples taken from domestic (cats and dogs), farm (pigs, rabbits and ostriches) and wild animals (foxes) from different provinces of Spain were evaluated for microsporidia infection by light microscopy and PCR. After Microsporidia species identification, E. bie...

Five diseases recorded in ostriches are regarded as posing a potential animal health threat to meat-importing countries. Newcastle disease causes an atypically low mortality in ostriches: infected birds display typical nervous symptoms but no pathognomonic lesions which could be detected during post-mortem inspection. The vaccination of feedlot birds and a thorough ante-mortem examination are r...

In the present work the biological behaviour of T. spiralis and T. pseudospiralis in ostriches is reported. Oral infections were performed in eight ostriches with two infective doses (10,000 and 80,000 larvae) for each species of Trichinella. On day 0, 30 and 60 p.i. blood samples were collected to assay the serum changes concerning specific muscle enzyme activities and total proteins. The immu...

Ostriches farmed in Canada often have particular behavioral problems that are brought about by periods of extreme confinement during winter months. Although they still perform normal species specific behaviors such as twirling, kanteling, and kicking, abnormal behaviors become prominent when excessively confined. They include for all age groups of ostriches, feather-picking, behavioral stargazi...

This study provides a reference for the radiographic anatomy of the thoraco-abdominal cavity of female ostriches as a representative of ratites. One ostrich cadaver, 2 adult and 2 growing ostriches were used. Right lateral radiographs produced by a 6-frame technique and 2 dorsoventral radiographs produced by an adapted 3-frame technique were selected and schematic illustrations of these were la...

Ratites differ distinctively in the anatomy of their digestive tract. For example, Ostriches (Struthio camelus) have a particularly long, voluminous colon and long paired caeca, Rheas (Rhea spp.) are characterised by a short colon with particularly prominent paired caeca, and Emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) – have neither very prominent caeca nor a prominent colon. We tested whether digesta exc...

Abstract We describe new fossils from the late Eocene of Mongolia, which show that crane-like Eogruidae and Ergilornithidae are stem group representatives Struthioniformes (ostriches). Currently, both taxa unanimously assigned to neognathous Gruiformes (cranes allies). However, ergilornithids a progressive reduction second toe, few earlier authors likened these birds ostriches, only extant with...