CHUV, Université de Montréal, St-Hyacinthe, QC

The chronically instrumented non-anesthetized fetal sheep model is used to study human fetal development in health and disease, because it permits surgical placement and maintenance of catheters and electrodes, repetitive blood sampling, substance injection, recording of bioelectrical activity, and in vivo imaging. We describe the procedures required to establish this model.

Here we present a protocol to surgically create 'intestinal ligated loops' in chicken small intestines. This procedure allows for the comparison of multiple Clostridium perfringens strains' virulence in situ in a single host. This method markedly decreases the number of chickens usually necessary for similar in vivo experiments.