Abstract

A cross sectional study was carried out to estimate the prevalence of chicken coccidial infections and assessment of the associated risk factor in backyard chickens in and around Debre Tabore town, South Gondar Zone, Northwest Ethiopia from October 2015 and May 2016.Floatation techniques were used for qualitative study of coccidialoocyst. Descriptive statistics was used to express prevalence while chi-square test used to assess if there was statistically significant association between targeted host factors and coccidial infection. The degrees of these associations were quantified using crude and adjusted odds ratio. Statistical significance was assumed if the confidence interval (CI) did not include one among its values or whenever p-value was less than 5%. The overall animal prevalence for coccidial infections was 21.4% (48/224) and the prevalence was significantly associated with breed (p=0.019), age (p=0.028) and sex (p=0.004) of the study animals. In a multivariable logistic regression analysis, female (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR)=0.3; 95%CI:0.17-0.68) and exotic breeds (AOR=0.46; 95%CI:0.23-0.93) were found less likely infected with coccidialoocystes as compared to male and local chickens. However, increased risk for coccidial infection was recorded in adult chicken (AOR=2.04; 95%CI:1.02-4.08) as compared to the grower chickens. In conclusion, this study showed coccidial infection could be important in the backyard chickens in the study area even though the overall prevalence was relatively low. Moreover, the prevalence was higher in adults than the growers, which alerts the need to undertake suitable and practically applicable control and prevention measures in the parent stocks.

Keywords: Backyard chicken;Coccidian infection;Prevalence

Abbreviations: ASL: Above Sea Level; DVM: Doctor of Veterinary Medicine; FVM: Factuality of Veterinary Medicine; SPP: Species