Prevalence of Eimmeria Species among Chickens In Bahir Dar Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

Parasitic diseases are among the major constraints of poultry production. The common internalparasitic infections that occur in poultry include cestodes, nematodes and protozoa (Eimeriaspecies). A cross sectional study was conducted in Bahir Dar town between October 2013 and April 2014 to determine the prevalence of Eimmeria species of chickens kept under different management systems and to assess the effect of sex, age and breed on the occurrence of Eimmeria species. Three hundred eighty four faecal and sixty mucosal scrapping samples collected from randomly selected chickens were examined using floatation and direct smear techniques respectively. In this study, the overall prevalence of Eimmeria species was found to be 40.6%. Out of the total of 195 and 189 village and small scale commercial chickens examined for Eimmeria species, 25.6% and 56.1% chickens respectively were found to be positive and the difference in prevalence of Eimmeria species between management systems was statistically significant (P<0.05). The overall prevalence of Eimmeriaspecies was significantly higher (P<0.05) in young, exotic and small scale commercial chickens than adult, local and village chickens. There was no statistically significant difference (P>0.05) in the overall prevalence of Eimeriaspecies between male and female chickens. The high prevalence of Eimmeriaspecies among chickens in the study area may be due to low level of management and health care services. This suggests the need to implement awareness creation among chicken producers on management and health care services of chickens; improvement of management practices and set up of prevention and control strategies so as to harvest the diverse products that may be generated from the poultry production sector