Performance of three local chicken ecotypes of Ghana naturally exposed to velogenic Newcastle disease virus
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Amuzu-Aweh, N.
Lamont, Susan
Botchway, P. K.
Tudeka, C. K.
Aning, K. G.
Dekkers, Jack
Lamont, Susan
Gallardo, R.
Kelly, T. R.
Bunn, D.
Zhou, H.
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Abstract
This study was to evaluate the performance of three Ghanaian local ecotypes that were exposed to a natural velogenic Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) challenge. The birds at four weeks of age had been challenged with a lentogenic (vaccine) form of the virus and later exposed to velogenic NDV when their anti-NDV antibody titres had fallen below 1000. All the birds lost weight over the 21 days of exposure to the virus, with the Coastal Savannah ecotype showing the fastest weight loss albeit not significant (p>0.05). Lesion scores for all ecotypes were low and similar across ecotypes suggesting that the challenge was not severe. Heritability was zero for the lesion scores and low (0.01) for post-challenge growth rate across ecotypes. Hence, not much progress can be made in selection to improve post infection growth rate.
Comments
This proceeding is published as Kayang, B.B, N. Amuzu-Aweh, P.K. Botchway, C.K. Tudeka, A. Naazie, K.G. Aning, J. Dekkers, S.J. Lamont, R. Gallardo, T.R. Kelly, D. Bunn and H. Zhou, "Performance of three local chicken ecotypes of Ghana naturally exposed to velogenic Newcastle disease virus." Proceedings of the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (2018): 11.846. Posted with permission.