Blue Light Color Reduces the Newcastle Disease Post-Vaccinal Reactions of Indian River Broilers under Egyptian Conditions

Poultry producers accustomed to use strong prophylactic measures such as routine vaccination to control Newcastle Disease (ND) as a trial to increase their productivity. Despite ND vaccinations, several post vaccine reactions of ND are being reported globally, which are major hindrances to the development of the poultry industry in the developing countries. This experiment was planned to study the effects of blue light colour and vitamin E and Selenium (Se) supplementation before and after Newcastle disease vaccination (NDV-LaSota) on post vaccine reactions (immune response) of a recently imported Indian River (IR) broilers to Egypt. In this study, 180 one-day old IR broiler chicks were used. The chicks were randomly assigned to three treatment groups of 60 each. The chicks in the first group were reared under white light colour (WLC) and kept as a control group. The chicks in the second group were kept under blue light colour (BLC) from an incandescent bulb two days before and after vaccination. Chicks in the third group were kept under white light color and supplemented with vita E and Se in the drinking water (WES) for 2 days before and after vaccination at the rate of 5 g per liter drinking water. The chicks were reared on a deep litter system and housed into three well controlled pens of 5.46 m2 with three replicates of 20 each using a density of 15 birds/m2 in the room. The results showed that the broilers reared under BLC and WES had a significant (p> 0.05) higher body weight gain, with obviously, economic feed conversion ratio (FCR), Newcastle disease virus antibody titer and low heterophil/lymphocyte ratio in comparing with WLC. Poultry producers can use blue light color or vitamin E and Se supplementation shortly before and after the vaccination to reduce the stress of vaccination and the post vaccinal reactions in IR broilers.