Diet and immunological memory of lines of White Leghorn chickens divergently selected for antibody response to sheep red blood cells

Antibody responses to a first, second, and third injection with SRBC, and growth were studied in lines of White Leghorn chickens selected for high (HA) or low (LA) 5-d antibody titers to an i.v. inoculation with 0.1 mL of a 0.25% suspension of SRBC. The experiment involved parallel studies on two groups of chicks hatched from the same matings of parental lines HA and LA at a 14-d interval. Chicks of each age-line subclass were fed either a high or low nutrient density diet from hatch onwards. When chicks of Hatches 1 and 2 were 28 and 14 d of age (doa) respectively, they were injected with 0.1 mL of 0.25% suspension of SRBC, and antibody titers measured 3 and 6 d later. A second and a third injection of the same concentration of SRBC was given to chicks of each age-line-diet subclass at 10-d intervals and antibody titers measured 3 and 6 d after each injection in different chicks randomly sampled from each age-line-diet subclass. After the first injection, antibody (primary) responses of HA chicks were higher than those of LA chicks regardless of age and diet. This difference (HA > LA) observed for the primary response was seldom evident in the responses to the second (secondary) and third (tertiary) injections. Antibody responses of LA chicks after the second and third injections were anamnestic. For HA chicks given the first injection at 28 doa, neither the secondary nor tertiary responses suggested anamnestic capacities, whereas there was apparent memory exhibited by the secondary and tertiary responses of HA chicks initially injected at 14 doa. The LA chicks were significantly heavier than HA chicks at all ages. Even though the higher nutrient density diet increased BW of chicks of both lines, its effect on memory responses was sporadic. The results of this experiment show that, even though divergent selection has been successful in the primary responses, correlated responses in immunological memory were not always observed, suggesting that the two types of responses might be under different genetic control.