Evaluation of the Efficacy of Baby Chick Ranikhet Disease Vaccine and Bangla Baby Chick Ranikhet Disease Vaccine in Fayoumi Chicks

Abstract

A study was undertaken for testing the comparative efficacy of two live vaccines produced in Bangladesh to control Newcastle disease (ND) in chickens. One of these vaccines named ‘baby chicks Ranikhet disease vaccine (BCRDV), a government vaccine produced by the Livestock Research Institute, Mohakhali, Dhaka, and the other named ‘Bangla-BCRDV®', a commercial vaccine produced recently by a pharmaceutical company. Both the vaccines are prepared using the ‘F' strain of Newcastle disease virus (NDV). Three hundred Fayoumi chicks distributed in 3 groups were used in this study. The results of this study revealed that, at the age of 49 days the survival rates of chicks belonged to BCRDV, Bangla-BCRDV® and control groups were 69, 11 and 18%, respectively. The survival rate of Fayoumi chicks in the BCRDV group was significantly higher than that of the two other groups (p <0.05). Conversely, almost similar survival rates of chicks were recorded in the control and Bangla-BCRDV® groups (p >0.05). At day-1, the haemagglutination inhibition (HI) titre to NDV of the chicks was log2 5.8 ± 0.79 (SEM). At day 35 the same HI titre was observed in the chicks of the BCRDV group, which was, 1 and 1.5 log (base 2) higher than the chicks of the control and Bangla-BCRDV® group, respectively. At day-49, HI titres to NDV ≥ log₂12 were recorded in the chicks of all the three groups that survived having challenged with velogenic NDV. There were no significant differences in weekly mean body-weights of the chicks in all the three groups until the week 8 when the mean bodyweight of the chicks was higher in the BCRDV group compared with the two others. These results indicted that the efficacy of BCRDV in Fayoumi chicks against ND was better than the Bangla-BCRDV®.