Occurrence and identification of contagious ecthyma in blackbuck.

A carcass of male free ranging adult blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) was presented for necropsy examination exhibiting thick confluent nodular skin lesions around the mouth and the dry scaly crusts/fissures on the skin of abdomen, thigh and shoulder with subcutaneous haemorrhages. The skin sample around mouth was found positive for orf virus (ORFV) identified by counterimmunoelectrophoresis and PCR. Histopathology of the mouth skin revealed the hyperkeratinization, epidermal sloughing and epithelial hyperplasia showing acanthosis with rete ridges and few eosinophilic intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies in keratinocytes.

Isolation of mixed subtypes of influenza A virus from a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

From April 2007 to March 2008, cloacal swabs were obtained from 246 casualty raptors recovered by various wildlife rehabilitation centers in the United States. The swabs were placed in a virus transport medium and transported to the laboratory on ice packs. At the laboratory, the samples were pooled with each pool consisting of five samples.