Centennial Review: Factors affecting the chicken gastrointestinal microbial composition and their association with gut health and productive performance.

Maintenance of "gut health" is considered a priority in commercial chicken farms, although a precise definition of what constitutes gut health and how to evaluate it is still lacking. In research settings, monitoring of gut microbiota has gained great attention as shifts in microbial community composition have been associated with gut health and productive performance. However, microbial signatures associated with productivity remain elusive because of the high variability of the microbiota of individual birds resulting in multiple and sometimes contradictory profiles associated with poor or high performance.

Microbial taxa in dust and excreta associated with the productive performance of commercial meat chicken flocks.

Background: A major focus of research on the gut microbiota of poultry has been to define signatures of a healthy gut and identify microbiota components that correlate with feed conversion. However, there is a high variation in individual gut microbiota profiles and their association with performance. Population level samples such as dust and pooled excreta could be useful to investigate bacterial signatures associated with productivity at the flock-level.

Molecular detection of Eimeria species and Clostridium perfringens in poultry dust and pooled excreta of commercial broiler chicken flocks differing in productive performance.

Necrotic enteritis and coccidiosis are the most economically detrimental enteric diseases of broiler chickens. This study aimed to investigate the association of DNA load of Clostridium perfringens, netB, and five Eimeria species (E. brunetti, E.

Erratum to "Sero-prevalence of in sheep in different geographical regions of Nepal" [5C (June 2018) 7-9].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.vas.

Methods to prevent PCR amplification of DNA from non-viable virus were not successful for infectious laryngotracheitis virus.

Molecular-based testing of poultry dust has been used as a fast, sensitive and specific way to monitor viruses in chicken flocks but it provides no information on viral viability. Differentiation of viable and nonviable virus would expand the usefulness of PCR-based detection. This study tested three treatments (1.

Sero-prevalence of in sheep in different geographical regions of Nepal.

The present study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of in sheep in Nepal. Blood samples were collected from 235 sheep from three districts of three different eco-zones namely, mountainous Jumla (88), hilly Pokhara (62) and plain/terai Chitwan (85). The samples were tested by using commercial ELISA kit.

Standardized ileal digestibility and digestible indispensable amino acid score of porcine and bovine hydrolyzates in pigs.

Background: The use of protein hydrolyzates in food and feed ingredients is a growing area of interest. The present study was conducted aiming to determine the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) and to evaluate protein quality of porcine and bovine hydrolyzates. The SID values were determined in pigs and these values were used to calculate digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS) values.