A simple method for separation of buffy coat from peripheral blood of chickens.

A simple pasteur pipette tube technique is described for the separation of buffy coat from the peripheral blood of chickens. Whole blood treated with disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA) and/or heparin is centrifuged. The buffy coat is removed by aspiration, resuspended in plasma and recentrifuged in tubes made from pasteur pipettes. From such narrow columns buffy coat suspensions may be recovered virtually free of red blood cells (<6 per cent). The recovery of nongranular leukocytes from EDTA-treated and heparin + EDTA-treated blood samples was 44.1 and 39.8 per cent respectively. The preparations obtained by both methods still contained high concentrations of thrombocytes. On an average, EDTA-treated and heparin + EDTA-treated preparations contained 230.3 and 58.4 thrombocytes per 100 leukocytes respectively. The recovery of thrombocytes in EDTA-treated preparations amounted to 42.7 per cent so that this technique may be used to concentrate thrombocytes for further study. The separation of buffy coat with heparin alone was not as clear and consistent because of the cell clumping which occurred.