Serologic monitoring of animal welfare-oriented laying-hen farms in South Korea

Abstract

As animal welfare issue becomes important, the European Union bans conventional cages for laying hens from 2012. So the alternative housing systems like floor pens, aviaries or free range systems have been suggested. From 2011 to 2014, we monitored 20 welfare-oriented laying hen farms in South Korea to figure out serological status of major viral diseases. During this period, total 3,219 blood samples were collected from the randomly selected chickens to test and evaluate the hemagglutination inhibition titers for low pathogenic avian influenza, Newcastle disease and egg drop syndrome’76. A total of 2,926 blood samples were tested through enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to assess the serological status of infectious bronchitis (IB). The distribution of ELISA titers for IB was various from almost 0 to 20,000 through the all weeks of age. Also, the antibody coefficient of variation for most of the diseases in this study was higher than those of typical cage layers. As this study was the first surveillance for major avian viral diseases of the animal welfare-oriented farms in South Korea, the results obtained from this study will help to determine what information and resources are needed to maintain better biosecurity and to improve the health and welfare of laying hen flocks.