It attacks the lining of the intestines, causing chronic diarrhea, weakness and weight loss, in roughly 3 percent of chickens. Eimeria is a pathogen that is easily and rapidly spread among farm animals. Next steps include taking the chicken walk model back to the pen to test whether it is an accurate predictor of at least one infection that costs poultry farmers billions annually. In fact, similar models could be developed for pretty much any farm animal, which commonly spread disease among themselves and sometimes to humans. “We want to know whether we can predict the infectivity level of a particular pen from how the birds are moving,” said Rao, who thinks the answer is “yes.” When chickens fall out of their usual patterns, that could be an indicator of disease as well, Rao added. But by plotting the patterns and multiplying them by the number of chickens in a pen, the mathematical model may help clarify quite literally how many ways/times chickens cross each other’s path – and re-cross their own – and the likelihood of disease spread that results. Laid out on a grid, the paths chickens take from say the corner of the pen to the food bowl and back, look like a colorful albeit confusing racetrack. While the resulting complex series of letters, numbers and symbols Rao has developed are likely a mystery to non-math aficionados, they basically show, not the gait, but the walk patterns of the chicken in a pen. “It’s a first step in learning more about how they spread infection and how best to address that,” said Rao, corresponding author of a study in Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences. Srinivasa Rao, a mathematical modeler in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. “What this mathematical model tells you at this minute is how a chicken walks, meaning its pattern, how it moves around a pen,” said Dr. – Plotting on a grid just how a chicken walks may one day give farmers more insight into how best to protect their flock from non-airborne pathogens that can also hurt their profit.
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