Common viral diseases of poultry in Mizoram: A pathological study

Poultry industry has made remarkable progress in Mizoram during the last few decades from a backyard venture to a considerable sophisticated commercial industry. However a negative trend in the growth was observed in last few years. One of the most important reasons behind this is frequent incidence of diseases in poultry farm leading to huge economic losses to the poultry farmers. During the study period a total of 476 dead and sick birds were collected from different organized and unorganized poultry farms of Mizoram. Of these 208 cases (i.e. 43.69%) were diagnosed as viral diseases. Among the diseases infectious bursal disease (IBD) was found highest i.e. in 72 (15.13%) followed by Newcastle disease (ND) in 40 (8.40%) Marek’s disease (MD) in 34 (7.14%) lymphoid leukosis (LL) in 28 (5.88%) hydropericardium hepatitis syndrome (HHS) in 24 (5.04%) and infectious laryngotracheitis (ILT) in 10 (2.10%) cases respectively. Age-wise analysis showed that the maximum number of cases were recorded in the age group of 3-6 weeks (40.38%) followed by 6-9 weeks (28.84%) above 12 weeks (17.30%) 1-3 and 9-12 weeks (6.73%) age groups of poultry.