Towards practical methods for assessing ILT vaccine take

Abstract

Infectious laryngotracheitis (ILT) is an ongoing problem in meat chickens in important production areas of Australia. In response to outbreaks, live vaccines are typically administered at 7-14 days of age in drinking water via nipple drinkers which may not provide optimal contact with susceptible tissues. The efficacy of vaccination is not routinely assessed. As part of a series of experiments investigating the kinetics of ILT virus (ILTV) in meat chickens after water vaccination via nipple drinkers, we investigated different sampling methods for assessing ILTV genome copy number (GC) by qPCR to assess flock status.