Poor uniformity, lameness and reduced water consumption are tip-offs that broilers may be infected with variant reovirus, Erin Riley, DVM, staff veterinarian at Sanderson Farms, told Poultry Health Today.
The epidemiology for variant reovirus isn’t clear, Riley said, but it spread across the southern US very rapidly through transport of live poultry and hatching eggs.
When the latest epidemic first emerged in 2012, it was a sizeable problem because hen flocks were naïve. Once vaccination with a killed autogenous product was initiated in pullets, variant reovirus became less of a problem, but it still occurs, he said.
