Vaccinating against necrotic enteritis

However, it just isn’t economically feasible to pick-up and individually vaccinate every broiler chick. So the next step for this project is to demonstrate that broiler hens can be vaccinated in order to produce antibodies in the egg capable of protecting the chicks in the critical early weeks of life. “Success at this stage will mean we have a vaccine ready for use in industry” adds Rob. “Our aim is to produce a vaccine that will not only protect birds from the serious gut damage that C. perfringens can inflict (pictured), but also stop the sub-clinical infections that can cause substantial productivity losses,” concluded Rob.

Scavenging Chickens Training Handbook

Scavenging Chickens Training Handbook

Balancing Omega 6 with Omega 3 to promote broiler heart health

Poultry CRC Honours Student, Ms Nicky-Lee Wilson, is looking to optimise the ratio of linoleic acid (Omega 6) to alpha-linolenic acid (Omega 3) in an attempt to promote cardiovascular health in broilers. Nicky-Lee’s project, under the supervision of Dr Rebecca Forder at the University of Adelaide, follows on from a larger scale validation trial conducted last year.

Specifically, Nicky-Lee will use some of the data and tissues from the previous trial to:

1) determine whether an increase in alpha-linolenic acid, in the form of flaxseed oil, increases levels of long chain Omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in the heart, and

2) see whether this increase improves markers of cardiovascular health in broilers.

Nick-Lee outlined the concept behind her project. “Omega 3s have received much attention, and have been shown to have cardio-protective effects in other species including humans, dogs and rodents. At the moment I am doing some general histology, looking for any signs of myofibre degeneration. We will then run some ELISAs for creatine kinase activity within the heart, to see if there are any changes between the diets. We will combine this with the fatty acid and morphometric data from the previous trial to determine whether there have been any improvements in cardiovascular health” she said.

Preliminary results indicate an increase in Omega 3 levels in the heart in response to the increase of flaxseed oil in the diet. “We will combine this result with general histology, looking for mild pathological changes (vacuolated sarcoplasm, interstitial oedema, changes in myocardial fibres etc). We have seen some mild indications of some of these changes in some of the sections we have stained, however, I am currently in the process of scoring these to determine whether this is associated with treatment or just a general population finding” said Nicky-Lee.

How yolk composition may affect growth of broiler chicks

This finding has significant implications, especially for the broiler industry where, up until now, genetic selection has been predominately based around growth rates and feed conversion post-hatch. This approach has led to some problems in fast growing broilers, such as skeletal issues. If factors in yolk are responsible for the development of certain phenotypes, then knowledge of those factors may pave the way for specific (and targeted) manipulation of the diet of broiler breeder hens to alter yolk composition and improve broiler health outcomes.

Village Poultry in South Africa

A Simple Guide to Managing Village Poultry in South Africa (David Farrell)

Illustration: Susan Powell

The main aim of this guide is to help rural families (village people) who have only a few chickens and who are unable to get advice easily to increase production of meat and eggs from their chickens. Their meat and eggs provide protein essential for children to grow and to allow their brain to develop well so that they can learn more easily and become tall and strong. It is also important that mothers who are nursing their babies have enough of the high-quality protein that eggs and chicken meat contain. Good nutrition is essential for good health.

Protecting our growing duck industry

As Dr Turni, a researcher based at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) at the Universitry of Queensland), explains “Riemerellla anatipestifer has at least 21 variations called serovars. It is vital to know which serovar or serovars are causing the disease because the most common method of preventing further infection is through a vaccine derived from the disease-causing serovars, called an autogenous vaccine. Such vaccines provide protection only against the serovar or serovars in the vaccine. Up until now, the Australian industry has had no capacity to design vaccines appropriately, as our diagnostic laboratories cannot provide services such as serotyping or genotyping. This means there is no advice available for the producer on which serovars are involved in the outbreak and, therefore, no advice can be provided on which serovars to include in an autogenous vaccine.”

Anatomy of the Chicken

"Anatomy of a Chicken"

Developing a new non-invasive test for welfare status

“Finding non-invasive tests for health, production and welfare of farm animals has been a top priority for research and the advent of genomics and molecular biology technology will help advance this important research area”, says Mingan Choct, CEO of Poultry CRC. Indeed, Anthony and Tamsyn are going to work with a number of established animal welfare researchers, combining traditional approaches and frontier science to search for additional objective measures of poultry welfare. Their idea is to use miRNA profiling as a definitive measure of a bird’s welfare status based on leads in other research findings. As Tamsyn notes, “recent studies investigating diseases in humans and other animals have shown clear differences in the expression patterns of miRNAs in the blood from healthy animals compared to those suffering disease.” Anthony added, “since miRNAs are found in human and cow milk, it’s reasonable to expect to find them in eggs. Therefore Tamsyn and I should be able to develop a technique to assess welfare status using eggs, and possibly excreta, non-invasively.”