Field Evaluation of Flock Production Performance of In ovo Injection of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus Immune Complex Vaccine in Commercial Broiler Farms

SUMMARY Infectious bursal disease (IBD) is a highly contagious immunosuppressive disease caused by a birnavirus destroying primarily the immature B lymphocytes in the bursa of Fabricius of young chickens. The conventional method of controlling IBD is to hyperimmunize hens, followed by vaccinating progeny after maternal antibody levels decrease. In recent years, in ovo technology has become an alternative choice of vaccination of broiler chicks against diseases. This field investigationcomparedtheselectedflock-raisingperformancesbetweeninovoinjectionofinfectious bursal disease virusimmune complex (IBDV-ICX) vaccine chicks andconventional IBD vaccination (non in ovo injection) chicks. The results showed that in ovo injection of IBDV-ICX vaccine could benefit livability (94.62%) and feed conversion ratio (1.73) significantly (P 0.05) but benefited production efficiency factor (P < 0.01) during the periodofmidwintertospring.Duetothepotentialforselectionbiasesofstudyflocks,thedata,which wereprovidedvoluntarily,increasingthestudypopulationisnecessaryforabetterunderstandingof the applications.