Chlamydia infection in ducks: preliminary communication.

Chlamydia psittaci was isolated from cloacal swab pools from ducks in processing plants, and from cloacal and conjunctival swab pools from ducks on farms, in a small proportion of the samples examined. These isolates were difficult to passage. This difficulty was partly overcome by the use of emetine as the cell growth inhibitor. The direct complement fixation (CF) test was modified for testing duck sera by using complement at the los dose of 1.5 units. By this method, positive titres were demonstrated in experimentally prepared duck antisera, and in some of the samples collected from breeding and fattening ducks.