embryo mortality

Objective. The purpose of this study was to characterize the incidence of EM in Ross 308 strain eggs. Materials and methods. A prospective cohort study was performed, through candling and embryodiagnosis, in 4 groups of eggs coming from 4 different age breeders. Other data such as percentage of infertility, malformation, malposition, cracked and contaminated eggs were reported. Results. General EM reached 16.08% IC95% (14.69; 17.60) and was different among the different age-groups (p<0.001), being higher for eggs from 64 week-old breeders with 27.66% IC95%(23.92; 31.99) and lower for the 47 weeks old ones (8.84% IC95%) (6.97; 11.22). In the first week of incubation 57.53% of the embryos died and mortality was at its highiest during days 1 and 3; in the second week EM was 38.42% died, with a maximum of deaths between days 19 and 21. Conclusions. This study allowed confirmation on the biphasic behaviour of EM, although there are variations in the peaks of mortality possibly attributed to differences in production conditions for each enterprise.

Reproductive disorders are responsible for significant economic losses in canary aviculture due to embryo and newborn chick mortality. Most of the time, deaths are caused by bacterial pathogens, however little published data exist about the prevalence of bacterial isolates that are identified during diagnostic protocols. This study reports on data collected from previous investigations carried out on cloacal swabs (n 456), unhatched eggs (n 52), and dead newborn chicks (n 68) collected from canary aviaries with a history of reproductive disorders. Of the examined samples, 41% were positive for the presence of pathogenic or potentially pathogenic bacteria, with particular regard to Gram negative species during bacteriological investigations. The most prevalent microorganisms were Gram‑negative (55%). A predominance of Klebsiella, Escherichia, and Pantoea genera was observed. These are usually associated to pathological conditions in pet birds. Among Gram‑positive bacteria, Bacillus spp. and Staphylococcus spp. were most prevalent. The antimicrobial susceptibility testing carried out on bacterial isolates showed a multiple resistance, especially against amoxycillin, erythromycin, spiramycin, tiamulin, and tylosin. This study represents a first attempt to provide an update on microbial causes of embryonic and neonatal mortality in canary aviaries in Italy; in addition, it provides further understandings about the efficacy of antimicrobial therapy. Reproductive disorders in domestic canaries (Serinus canarius domesticus): a retrospective study on bacterial isolates and their antimicrobial resistance in Italy from 2009 to 2012

Contents Previous research by this group (2003) has demonstrated that heat stress during in vitro culture (IVC) significantly increased early embryo mortality. The experiments reported here exam-ine the effects of heat treatment (HT) during in vitro matur-ation (IVM) and during in ...

The potential of the developing zebrafish model for toxicology and drug discovery is limited by inefficient approaches to manipulating and chemically exposing zebrafish embryos-namely, manual placement of embryos into 96- or 384-well plates and exposure of embryos while still in the chorion, a barrier of poorly characterized permeability enclosing the developing embryo. We report the automated dechorionation of 1600 embryos at once at 4 h postfertilization (hpf) and placement of the dechorionated embryos into 96-well plates for exposure by 6 hpf. The process removed ≥95% of the embryos from their chorions with 2% embryo mortality by 24 hpf, and 2% of the embryos malformed at 120 hpf. The robotic embryo placement allocated 6-hpf embryos to 94.7% ± 4.2% of the wells in multiple 96-well trials. The rate of embryo mortality was 2.8% (43 of 1536) from robotic handling, the rate of missed wells was 1.2% (18 of 1536), and the frequency of multipicks was &lt;0.1%. Embryo malformations obser...

A 3 MHz ultrasonic transducer was used to make pregnancy diagnoses in 320 milk and beef cows and heifers, on average 41 days after the last insemination. The ultrasound diagnostic findings were systematically confirmed by rectal palpation. Signs of pregnancy were detected as early as the 25th day after insemination. Discounting 16 doubtful results, the accuracy of positive diagnosis (94 per cent) was better than negative diagnosis (89.7 per cent). Ultrasound scanning could be used for the study of embryo mortality or for the determination of fetal age.