Many of the dogs and cats lives affected with behavioral disorders have been ended either in euthanasia, relinquishment, chronic suffering or would have handed over to shelters. Various types of behavioral disorders in dogs and cats include nonspecific/idiopathic aggression, fear, phobia, anxiety disorder and stereotyping behavior. The goal of therapy should be the modification of the abnormal behavior by environmental management, training with pharmacological intervention being adjunct to the behavioral modification training. Major classes of behavioral modifying drugs used in pets are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI), antipsychotic agents, anticonvulsants and benzodiazepines. The mechanism of action has been attributed to modification of the availability or function of various neurotransmitters implicated in the behavioral disorders. Presently, the approved drugs for veterinary use has been limited to: selegiline, a SSRI, for canine cognitive dysfunction and clomipramine, a TCA, for separation anxiety in dogs, with majority drugs being used on extra label fashion with the extrapolation of human data. The article reviews about the pathophysiology of behavioral disorders, diagnostic approaches and drugs available for the treatment of abnormal behavior caused by variation in neurotransmitter.

One of the major concerns in poultry rearing has been the use of antibacterials for the control of infections. The antibacterial drugs often find their way into the edible part of chicken, thus making it an issue of human food safety. Screening of chicken meat for antibacterials is thus an important part of ensuring food safety. Simple sensitive methods which could be adopted easily at laboratories of research institutes and testing centres are a need of the hour. In this study, one such assay method for the assay of oxytetracycline, a popularly used antibiotic in poultry farms, in broiler chicken meat standardized using High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is described. The HPLC assay method consisted of a C18column as the stationary phase and a mobile phase consisting of 0.2M oxalic acid: Acetonitrile: Methanol (3.5:1:1, v/v) pumped in with the flow rate of 1.5 ml/ min and assayed at 360nm for detection of OTC The Limit of Detection and Limit of Quantification was 0.141 µg/ ml and 0.465 µg/ ml respectively. The total elution time was less than 4 minutes with a recovery rate of 105%. The results suggest that this method, with its high detection throughput and remarkable sensitivity and specificity, can be applied successfully for the field screening of oxytetracycline residue in chicken meat samples.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) modification that enables molecular diagnosis and detection viable cells from diverse samples is based on the Viability PCR (V-PCR). In this study, we optimized V-PCR using a candidate L. plantarum probiotic strain and the technique performed efficiently in detecting live cells from an admixed suspension of live and dead cells. Application of the V-PCR on different probiotics strains (B. coagulans, L. plantarum and L. fermentum) also revealed a strong positive correlation in its performance across the strains tested even with an admixture of varied concentration of live and dead cells and different dilutions respectively (r=0.93 to 0.98). We obtained five and four commercial probiotics available for humans and animal use respectively from the market and tested for the recovery of total viable bacteria by agar pour plate method and also the count of viable bacteria by V-PCR. All commercial preparations when tested by the pour plate method recovered their listed viable counts except for the probiotic B and F, and C & G revealed lower counts (<1 to 2 log, and <3 to 4 log respectively) than the the manufacturer’s claims. A semi quantification approach using arbitrary density units with the universal 16S rRNA

Two 8-week old Aseel chicks were presented for necropsy from a native chicken farm with the history of swollen left eyelid, dyspnoea, off feed, dullness and sudden death. Gross examination of the carcasses revealed swollen left eye with cheesy exudate on incision. Lungs revealed severe congestion, with multifocal grey consolidated areas (1-2 mm diameter) while, the intestinal lumen was clogged by numerous round worms. Histopathological examination of lungs revealed multifocal granulomatous area with central necrosis, presence of macrophages, lymphocytes and multinucleated giant cells. Special staining with Periodic acid Schiff and Grocott-Gomori’s methenamine silver stain showed the presence of fungal hyphae and spores in the lung lesions. The fungus was identified as Aspergillus sp. by cultural examination. Intestines revealed numerous cut sections of worms with eosinophilic and mononuclear cell infiltration and were identified as Ascaridia galli. Eye lesion had multifocal mild to moderate mononuclear cell infiltration with osseous metaplasia of scleral cartilage in eyeball. Staphylococcus hyicus was isolated from the eye exudate by cultural examination. Etiological diagnosis revealed an outbreak of Aspergillosis, Ascariasis and Staphylococcal blepharitis in the farm.

The genetically improved modern commercial layers are capable of producing 330 eggs in their productive life of up to 72 weeks. The journey of genetic improvement continues and the breeding companies now developed ‘long life’ layers that can lay 500 eggs in 100 weeks of age. The changing production dynamics of layer chicken calls for better understanding of nutrient requirements and good nutritional programming. Prediction models are being used to assess the nutrient requirements of the hybrid layers; while, precision feeding of quantity of feed and or nutrients can lower feed costs and ensures more predictable bird performance. In-ovo and early chick nutrition give jump start at juvenile stage of chicken. The idea of split feeding, although beneficial in certain production parameters, suffers the disadvantages of additional infrastructure and workforce requirements. The nutritional programme foregg size, shell quality and feeding for value added designer egg production is aimed at increasing the profit to the farmers. In recent days, feeding for healthy gut that enables efficient digestion and absorption of nutrients has also gained paramount importance. The concept of feed nanotechnology can help in increasing nutrient availability and environment protection; while, phytogenic products can some extent replace the role played by antibiotic growth promoters. The advancements in biotechnology has opened up not only numerous opportunities for the development of products and technologies for poultry feeding, but also to study the influence of nutritional factors on genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.

Antimicrobial resistance is a global pandemic and one of the biggest public health challenges. Efflux pumps are one of several antimicrobial resistance mechanisms. Efflux pumps are proteins that act by efflux or pumping substances out of cells. The major efflux pumps in bacteria include the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) Superfamily, Small Multidrug Resistance Family (SMR), Major FacilitatorSuperfamily (MFS), Multidrug and Toxic Compound Extrusion Family (MATE), and Resistance Nodulation Cell Division (RND). Quinolones are antimicrobials that inhibit DNA synthesis by inhibiting type IV topoisomerase and DNA gyrase of bacteria. Efflux-mediated quinolone resistance can happen by the overexpression of some efflux pump genes in the prokaryotes. The substrate for most of the efflux pumps is fluoroquinolones like ciprofloxacin and Norfloxacin. A novel strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance is by the use of efflux pump inhibitors which can effectively block the efflux pumps. Plant-derived phytochemicals are promising lead molecules in developing an efflux pump inhibiting drug and thereby combat quinolone mediated efflux resistance. This review discusses plant-derived EPIs that can be used to combat quinolone-resistant microorganisms. 

Ticks and tick-borne diseases affect animal and human health worldwide and are the cause of significant economic losses. During necropsy of a free ranging wild Asian elephant unusually large, engorged ticks attached to the ear and d ewlap was noticed. On the basis of morphological study, the ticks were identified as Amblyomma integrum. This is the first report on the occurrence of A. integrum ticks on Asian elephant of Tamil Nadu, India. The detailed morphology of the sexes and the medical and veterinary significance of the tick are discussed in the light of available literature.

The present investigation was conducted in four districts (Namakkal, Tiruppur, Tirunelveli and Vellore) of Tamil Nadu with an objective to record animal husbandry breeding related ethnoveterinary medicines (EVM) and its scientific rationale. For this two blocks were chosen purposively from each of the selected districts and two villages from each block were selected randomly. Fifteen livestock rearers were selected randomly from each of the villages selected thus making a final sample of 240 livestock farmers. Results of this study revealed that, a total number of five ethno veterinary medicinal practices for anestrum and six EVM practices for retained placenta were adopted by the farmers. Out of these practices, use of half of a coconut and rhizome of viralimanjal (Curcuma longa) of 10 g for 10 days orally to the anestrum cow and feeding of the animals with bamboo leaves for the retained placenta was found to be having highest scientific relevant score of 0.5781 and 0.8437 respectively. On the basis of this study it was recommended that dairy cow owners should be made aware of using these two successful EVM treatment for anestrum and retained placenta after validating  these practices through suitable clinical trials.

The study was carried out to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of boric acid on serum biochemical, tibia morphometry and mineralization of Japanese quail fed diets supplemented with boric acid at different levels of 0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 ppm were prepared in a 5 x 3 design. A total of 150 day-old Japanese quail chicks were individually weighed and allotted randomly into five treatment groups with three replicates containing ten birds each, the birds were fed with experimental diets for a period of 5 weeks. At the end of the 5th week, two birds per replicate an average of six birds per treatment were slaughtered. Blood and tibia were collected accordingly. Serum calcium level significantly (p<0.05) increased but serum phosphorus, serum alkaline phosphatase, tibia morphometry and mineralization were not influenced by dietary boric acid supplementation. Results indicated that dietary boric acid level can be further increased in the quail diet for optimum bone mineralization.

Avian infectious bronchitis (IB) is a common, highly contagious, acute, and economically important viral disease of chickens caused by avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) of Coronaviridae. Nephropathogenic strains have emerged from mutation of widely used classical, live attenuated IB vaccines which mainly protects from respiratory form of the disease. The present work is directed to study the ultrastructure of the new strain of IBV, the IND/AHL/16/01, that was first isolated from an outbreak of nephritis and gout related mortality cases of coloured layer pureline birds at Indian Council of Agricultural Research - Directorate of Poultry Research (ICAR-DPR). Molecular characterisation and phylogenetic analysis was carried out and it was confirmed that the isolate is a novel nephropathogenic strain. Nine-day-old Embryonated Chicken Eggs (ECE) obtained from in-house hatchery of ICAR-DPR were inoculated by allantoic route and observed for embryonic lesions and mortality. The allantoic Àuid from these ECE were collected into 2.5% glutaraldehyde and stored at 4 degree Celsius until processing. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) imaging by negative staining technique, revealed electron dense, pleomorphic Virus Like Particles (VLP's) of 120 nm diameter.