written by: dr. jacquie jacob, university of kentucky
acute: an acute disease typically involves a sudden onset of severe clinical signs and death (in contrast with a chronic illness, which involves long-term or recurrent symptoms).
chronic: a chronic disease generally progresses slowly and/or involves long-term or recurrent symptoms (in contrast with an acute illness, which involves a sudden onset of symptoms).
contagious: a contagious disease spreads rapidly from one individual to another (in contrast with a noncontagious disease, which does not spread easily).
infectious: infectious diseases are caused by organisms, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, that infect, or invade, another organism and cause disease.
morbidity: the term morbidity refers to the number of birds within a given flock that are affected by a certain condition or disease (disease prevalence within a population) and that need to be culled— for health reasons such as leg problems or other clinical signs of disease—as a result.
mortality: the term mortality refers to the number of birds that die from an illness within a given flock.
noncontagious: a noncontagious disease typically does not spread easily from individual to individual (in contrast with a contagious disease, which spreads easily).
noninfectious: noninfectious diseases are caused by nonliving agents such as poisons, mycotoxins, and nutritional deficits.
poultry: the term poultry refers to chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, quail, pheasants, pigeon, guinea fowl, peafowl, ostrich, emu, and rhea.