Chickens dieting to help Delaware waterways
...e phosphorus content of their manure, beginning as chicks up to market-size birds. The painstaking research defined the boundary at which the total phosphorus levels in a broiler chicken's corn-soybean meal diet can be reduced without detriment to the birds' health, as well as the percentage of phytase th...Parents seeking sex abandon 1 in 3 offspring
...eans they miss out on the opportunity to have more chicks themselves. It also increase their risk of being taken by predators while incubating the eggs or feeding the young. What is unusual about the penduline tit breeding system is that in one in three cases both males and females are willing to abandon ...Smithsonian's National Zoo researchers use electronic eggs to help save threatened species
...ri bustards at the Smithsonians National Zoo. Four chicks of this threatened African bird have hatched in June and July. Along with the bumper crop of baby birds is a bumper crop of new information for scientists working to preserve the species, thanks to an electronic egg that transmits real-time incubatio...Assessing levies for by-catch could fund conservation measures
...s of population decline, such as rats eating eggs, chicks and adult birds on the island. Their analysis showed that closing the fishery around Lord Howe Island would cost about $3 million U.S. and increase the growth rate of the shearwater population by about 6 percent. But killing the rats would cost only ...American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- July 11, 2007
...s trained personnel and subjects birds especially chicks and small adults to potentially fatal stress. Collection of bird droppings is noninvasive, but droppings must be refrigerated and shipped to a testing lab. Researchers long have eyed oil secreted from the preen gland (located at the base of the ta...Chickens also orient themselves by the Earth's magnetic field
...ickens as well. For this purpose, newly hatched chicks were imprinted on a red ball which they from then on regarded as their mother. The researchers then hid the ball behind one of four screens, and taught the chickens by intensive training that the mother was always behind the screen that was in the no...CU study reveals why starling females cheat
...eeders, meaning breeding pairs get help in raising chicks from other family group members.) This additional ... are usually related to the chicks. By helping the chicks survive, they pass on familial genes. In contrast, some females cheat with males outside their gro...Gannet population under threat from global warming
...hers are already seeing the numbers of unprotected chicks rise and fear it can only get worse. Gannets pai...cubated egg to hatch and a further ninety days for chicks to fledge. Theres only time for each gannet pairing to raise one chick each year, so with an increas...Tropical birds have slow pace of life compared to northern species, study finds
...opical birds live longer, lay fewer eggs and their chicks grow slower than those of temperate birds. The researchers traveled to Panama where they captured 69 species of tropical birds and measured their basal metabolic rate (BMR) the minimum amount of energy they expend at rest, solely to maintain their...Huddling and a drop in metabolism allow penguins to survive the South Pole cold
...f the five pairs studied, three were feeding their chicks until October 2001. The experimental pairs in the study resumed with the expected breeding cycle, and their breeding success was similar to penguin pairs without device implantation. Results This study is the first to provide long-term deep bod...In-shell vaccine for chick disease
...ientists are now developing a new way to vaccinate chicks against the disease one that can be delivered whi...accine company Intervet UK. It can be delivered to chicks still in the egg (in-ovo) using robotic 'vaccinators'. IBV is the worst infectious disease in ter...Starting over: Wnt reactivates dormant limb regeneration program
...mysterious barrier to regeneration in animals like chicks that can't normally replace missing limbs while inactivating it in animals known to be able to regenerate their limbs (frogs, zebrafish, and salamanders) shuts down their ability to replace missing legs and tails. "In this simple experiment, we remo...USGS at Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
...Blood mercury levels in a sample of Wisconsin loon chicks indicated mercury exposure in some chicks rivaled that of adult birds during the breeding season. Blood mercury concentrations rapidly decline...Tips from the journals of the American Society for Microbiology
.... Both avian and human isolates proved lethal for chicks while demonstrating similar virulence patterns, one of which was identified in 75% of the isolates. "The results obtained with the O18:K1:H7 E. coli strains that we have studied here show that various but closely related clones can be recovered fro...Vax and Pax: Taking turns to build an eye
...at protein into chick retinal precursor cells, the chicks had no eye. "What you had was a chicken with just a big optic nerve," says Lemke, noting with satisfaction that this was exactly the opposite outcome his group had observed when they genetically eliminated Vax2 and Vax1 genes from mice. "In that c...Conflict over rearing young shapes breeding systems
...irds. These studies suggested that in species with chicks that need a lot of parental care, cooperative rearing is more likely to persist. In species with young that become independent early, either males or females are likely to desert their partners....Bird moms manipulate birth order to protect sons
... are in the nest fewer days." Even so, the male chicks that grow up during mite season end up just as big...en mortality risk of staying in the nest is great, chicks need to complete their growth fast and get out as soon as they can," Badyaev said. "What should a mo...Female birds boost up their eggs when hearing sexy song
...ter the size of eggs and possibly the sex of their chicks according to how they perceive their mate's quality. The researchers played back attractive ("sexy") songs and less attractive control songs of male canaries to female domesticated canaries. When the females started egg-laying they varied the size o...Gene therapy for chicken model of childhood blindness
...mbryos that had the abnormal gene, and allowed the chicks to hatch normally. Of seven treated chicks, six appeared to develop sight, in contrast to untreated animals. The improvement in the chicks' sight occurred despite the fact that only a relatively small percentage of the receptor cells were infected by...Animal brains 'hard-wired' to recognize predator's foot movements, Queen's study suggests
...ator or prey is nearby. "Research on newly hatched chicks suggests that it works from very early on in an animal's development," says Dr. Troje. "It seems like their brains are 'hard wired' for this type of recognition." One impetus for starting this research several years ago was a question by his young ...