Prevalence of Coccidiosis and Identify the Potential Risk Factors in Chicken at Mitto district Silte Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Poultry industry in Ethiopia is facing a range of constraints including feed, improved breeds and diseases. Both in extensive and intensive production system, diseases pose serious economic impact due to high mortality and morbidity. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of poultry coccidiosis in Mitto district. The result revealed that out of 288 household collected pooled dropping samples examined, 20.5% (n=59) were positive for eimeria oocysts. Breed based prevalence was recorded high in mixed (29.6%) and exotics (22.9%) than local chickens (12.8%) and the observed prevalence in exotic and mixed were significantly different (p<0.05)from local birds. Likewise, the prevalence noted across management systems i.e. 29.4% in semi-intensive and 16.1% in backyard were also significantly different (p<0.05). Among the six predictors considered, three of them, namely, exotic breeds flock size >10 and chicken managed in semi-intensive system were found to have the higher prevalence compared to the corresponding comparative categories. Characteristic Intestinal lesions observed in postmortem were higher (62.5%), among young and followed by adult (16.7%). The largest proportion of intestinal lesion (55.6%) was seen in exotic birds. Therefore, the present study indicates that coccidiosis is an important disease that worth attention in the study area and the growing small scale production system that use exotic breeds and their crosses must give due attention to management system in order to minimize the impact of the diseases.

Keywords: Backyard, Coccidiosis, Eimeria, Mitto, Poultry, Prevalence, Risk factors

DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/13-7-04

Publication date:May 31^st 2023