ORLD POULTRYElsevier olume No - PDF document

ORLD POULTRY-Elsevier olume 17,No 2.'01 MANAGEMENT E Antibodies to curb broodiness of turkeys turkeys through the use of Sponsored by the US Poultryresearchers discovered that antibodies could prevent turkey Prevention of broodiness can lead to improved egg production ORLD POULTRY-Elsevier lume 17,No 2.'01 or buffered physiological saline for nineconsecutive days. one of the hens became broody duringthe first broodiness cycle after receiving 1.0ml of high molecular weight antibodies overnine days. The fact that those birds injectedprior to the time that turkeys normallyshow broody symptoms (three to five weeksafter production starts) may be the propereight monoclonal antibodies. This is sup-ported by the fact that prolactin levels inthat treatment group were lowest duringthe nine-day period.The other treatment groups were ineffec-tive in preventing broodiness. Since thehigh molecular weight monoclonal anti-body treatment appeared to be the most ef-fective in controlling broodiness during thefirst broody cycle. We omitted the low mole-cular weight monoclonal antibody treat-ment, and in its place we used two dosagelevels of the high molecular antibody treat-ment during the second broodiness cycle ofthis next experiment.appeared that high molecular weightmonoclonal antibodies were able to preventbroodiness only when females were inject-ed early in the breeding season and prior tothe first broodiness cycle. There appears tobe no logical relationship between the per-centage of birds showing broodiness symp-toms and prolactin levels.gg production was unaffected by the im-posed treatments. Percent fertility was, ingeneral, satisfactory. The injected controlfemales showed 93 percent fertility whilemolecular weight monoclonal antibodiesshowed only 87 percent fertility. The differ-Economic valueThe results obtained in these trials were in-conclusive. This probably relates to two fac-tors. The primary factor was low titers of theantibodies used. The second factor was thetime the females were injected (i.e., at peakof the first broodiness cycle). When thebirds were injected prior to the first broodi-ness cycle, the results showed that the highmolecular weight monoclonal antibodiescompletely prevented broodiness.dditional research must be conducted toconfirm or refute these results. In addition,antibody titers must be high enough to pre-vent broodiness with one or no more thantwo injections before monoclonal antibod-ies use will be of practical use to the turkeybreeder industry.mproved egg production by simply pre-venting broodiness could be of major eco-nomic value to the turkey industry. For ex-ample, if potential egg production could beimproved by only two eggs, assuming that50 percent of the birds in a flock normallybecome broody, this would mean an addi-tional $1.30/hen increase in income (twoeggs x 65 cents/egg). When applied to the4,000,000 turkey breeder hens currentlyutilised in the US, the US turkey breeder in-dustry could realise an increase in gross in-come of $5,200,000/year.