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Case Report: Infectious Bursal Disease in Puerto Rico Broilers

1970; American Association of Avian Pathologists; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1588485

1938-4351

D. S. Bond, S. A. Edgar, Gabriel Gonzalez Calderin, B. Negron Ramos,

Parasitic Diseases Research and Treatment

Although there are several references (1-11) on infectious bursal disease (IBD, Gumboro) in the United States, reports are scant of the disease in other countries. Recently, at least 10 independent broiler growers with a total capacity of 186,000 chickens in the Aibonito area of Puerto Rico had birds suffering from an acute disease. The outbreaks initially occurred in birds 5 to 6 weeks old, but most outbreaks now occur at 3 weeks of age. The disease usually lasted 5 to 7 days, with the birds showing a loss of appetite, listlessness, dehydration, some slight tremor, picking of vents, and passing large amounts of urates in their droppings. Maximum mortality on any farm has not exceeded 11%. Postmortem examinations revealed that affected birds had typical IBD lesions with swollen edematous bursa, numerous hemorrhages of the skeletal muscles, pale kidneys with large amounts of urates, and severe dehydration of the general musculature. Two attempts were made to infect susceptible birds with the infectious bursal agent (IBA) by the following procedures: Each lot of bursa tissue from two farms was emulsified in 50 parts of sterile saline, and three 4-week-old susceptible chickens were inoculated intraocularly with freshly prepared inoculum. Test chickens were disease-free, and each group was maintained for 72 hours in isolation cages after inoculation. They were then sacrificed and examined for IBD. In both attempts the bursal tissue caused typical IBD lesions in all susceptible birds. In addition the isolate was tested for cross-immunity with Auburn University IBA, and birds immunized with Auburn strain IBA resisted challenge with the Puerto Rico samples.