Poultry industry is faced during the last years by pro-
blems resulting from respiratory infections. Mycoplas-
mas are reported by several authors to cause consider-
able economic losses (Cahalam,1974).
Stipkovits (1979) pointed out that layers infected with
mycoplasmas produce lesser eggs and also showed reduc-
tion in the rate of hatchability by 10-15 4%.
It. is known that avian mycoplasmas nowadays include 19
species, however only 4 species, namely M. gallisepti-
cum, M. synoviae, M. meleagridis and M. iowae are rep-
orted to be pathogenic (Yamamoto, 1985).
It is however not known which species are prevalent
among poultry in the kingdom, therefore the aim of the
present work was to elucidate the incidence of myco-
plasmas in poultry in various different farms in the
kingdom.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Chickens of different ages (less than one month and up
to 10 months) were collected from 7 farms in the Eas-
tern Province. A total of 457 samples of the internal
Organs, namely, the lungs, trachea, air sacs, liver,
Spleen, kidneys, heart, gizzard, caecum cloaca, ovar-
ia, testes and joints of 95 chickens, were collected
aseptically and inoculated into broth and on solid.