The recurrent outbreaks of fatal Newcastle disease (ND) in commercial poultry flocks throughout the world indicate that routine vaccinations are failing to sufficiently induce the high levels of immunity necessary to control ND. There is a need for vaccination programmes that could be initiated at 1-day-old for mass application and which would induce a long-lasting immunity, with no need for a booster vaccination at a later age. In this context, the duration of immunity delivered by a vaccination programme including a recombinant herpesvirus of turkeys expressing the F gene of ND virus (rHVT-ND) and live ND vaccine at 1-day-old was compared with a classical programme that included a conventional live and an inactivated ND vaccine at the same age in commercial layer chickens. The humoral, cell-mediated and local immunity were followed weekly and birds were challenged with a viscerotropic velogenic ND virus strain at 6 and 10 weeks of age. We determined that immunity induced by the vaccination programme involving the rHVT-ND vaccine was more protective than that provided by the conventional vaccine-based regime. This might be related to a T-helper type 1 (Th1) cellular-driven immunological response, in contrast to the T-helper type 2 (Th2) humoral-oriented immune response provided by the current conventional vaccine-based vaccination programmes.