IS THERE ANY MERIT TO USING AN AUTOGENOUS VACCINE FOR VARIANT SPECIES OF EIMERIA?
A. Autogenous vaccines are derived from uncharacterized Eimeria field species. These poorly defined species are not subjected to the same rigorous testing as the licensed, defined species of Coccivac. To develop a safe, consistent vaccine, it is imperative that the basic species characteristics such as pathogenicity, antigenicity and anticoccidial drug sensitivity are well defined. Using a poorly defined vaccine highly increases the risk of rapidly spreading unwanted contaminates from a few selected farms to all company farms, which could be an overnight disaster and a very expensive problem to control later; it also decreases the chances of maximizing production performance due to inconsistent product manufacturing from serial to serial. Q.