The contribution of humoral immunity to the control of avian reoviral infection in chickens after vaccination with live reovirus vaccine (strain 2177) at an early age.

The presence of maternal immunity in broilers does not preclude the successful protective immunization with an attenuated live reovirus vaccine at 1-day-old. This was recently demonstrated in a reovirus challenge model based on reovirus isolation from different organs (van Loon et al., 2002).