In this study  polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies to native and denatured chicken ovalbumin (OVA) were produced to compare their dependency on continuous and three‐dimensional epitopes These antibodies were characterized with respect to reactivity to native and denatured OVA by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) employing surface‐bound OVA and streptavidin‐capture ELISA to determine whether effects of different coating influence antibody specificity and with respect to epitope specificity by peptide ELISA  using overlapping peptides  covering the complete OVA sequence