Department of Animal Medicine, Production and Health (MAPS), University of Padua, 35020 Legnaro (PD), Italy.
Ceva Santé Animale, 33500 Libourne, France.
Poult Sci. 2020 Jun;99(6):2976-2982. doi: 10.1016/j.psj.2020.03.017. Epub 2020 Apr 15.
Vaccination is currently one of the most relevant control strategies in poultry production to reduce infectious disease-induced economic losses and decrease antimicrobial use. Besides intrinsic vaccine efficacy, a proper administration is fundamental to achieve an adequate coverage and protection. Hatchery vaccination is becoming the standard approach for routine vaccination because of administration easiness, the possibility to standardize and optimize the overall process, and the lower impact on animal welfare compared with different types of on-farm vaccination. However, a continuous maintenance, refinement, and training of the personnel are the key to success. In the present work, the effect of longitudinal hatchery audits, performed using a standardized, expert-developed questionnaire was evaluated in 169 hatcheries, located in 11 European countries, over a period of more than 4 yr. A dedicated tablet-based application was implemented for data collection, storage, and analysis, and the obtained scores were used in the evaluation, reporting to the hatchery management and improvement of critical points. A positive significant association was demonstrated between the variation in global and process-specific hatchery scores and the number of performed audits. Similarly, when the longitudinal nature of the data (i.e., multiple visits) was accounted for using linear mixed models, including the hatchery and country as random factors, a significant trend in performance improvement was observed visit after visit, although with certain differences based on the specific score and country. The present study demonstrates the benefits of an objective evaluation of hatchery performances through a standardized questionnaire, followed by the discussion on the major required actions. The widespread application of this approach should lead to a significant improvement in vaccine administration performances, with direct consequences on infectious disease occurrence and animal production performances, and indirectly on therapeutic and control-related costs.
疫苗接种是目前禽类生产中减少传染病引起的经济损失和减少抗生素使用的最相关控制策略之一。除了内在的疫苗效力外，适当的管理对于实现充分的覆盖和保护至关重要。由于管理方便、有可能标准化和优化整个过程以及与不同类型的农场疫苗接种相比对动物福利的影响较小，孵化场疫苗接种正成为常规疫苗接种的标准方法。然而，持续的人员维护、改进和培训是成功的关键。在目前的工作中，使用标准化的专家开发的问卷对 169 家孵化场（分布在 11 个欧洲国家）进行了纵向孵化场审计，持续了 4 年多。专门的基于平板电脑的应用程序用于数据收集、存储和分析，获得的分数用于评估、向孵化场管理层报告，并改进关键点。在评估中，证明了全球和特定于过程的孵化场得分的变化与进行的审计数量之间存在正显著关联。同样，当使用线性混合模型考虑数据的纵向性质（即多次访问），并将孵化场和国家作为随机因素时，尽管基于特定分数和国家存在某些差异，但在每次访问时都观察到性能改进的显著趋势。本研究通过标准化问卷客观评估孵化场性能，并讨论了主要的必要行动，证明了这种方法的好处。这种方法的广泛应用应导致疫苗接种管理性能的显著提高，这将直接影响传染病的发生和动物生产性能，并间接影响治疗和控制相关成本。
