Prevalence of 'Mycoplasma synoviae' in eggs from laying hens using ELISA

'Mycoplasma synoviae' ('M. synoviae') can cause respiratory disease, synovitis, peritonitis, egg apical abnormalities or a subclinical infection. The importance of 'M. synoviae' is well established in broilers but only a few studies have been conducted in layers. In the present study, the prevalence of 'M. synoviae' in commercial layer flocks was determined by ELISA using egg yolk antibodies. Subsequently, a possible correlation between the serological status of 'M. synoviae' and egg shell quality was also studied. In the flocks under study, seroprevalence of 'M. synoviae' was found to be 69 % (95 % confidence interval (CI) = 47 to 91). Statistical analysis showed that the vaccinated group (3.0 ± 0.1) had the highest translucency score as compared to infected (2.4 ± 0.1) and uninfected (2.5 ± 0.1) groups, whereas % shell reflectivity was highest in the infected group (31.41 ± 0.3) as compared to the other two groups. Shell breaking strength (39.5 ± 0.5 Newtons) and shell deformation (298.7 ± 3.8 μm) values were significantly lower in the infected group than in the uninfected and vaccinated groups. There was no significant difference among these three groups for egg quality parameters egg weight, egg shell weight, % egg shell, shell thickness.