Abstract:
The commercial poultry are susceptible to various diseases causing a high mortality. Coccidiosis is a protozoan disease of economic importance in the majority of the developing countries including Pakistan. Its control needs an appropriate management strategy along with its adequate treatment. This disease results in mortality, extensive veterinary costs and loss in production. A study was carried out from January to December 2014; to investigate the possible risk factors associated with its transmission in 120 randomly selected commercial poultry farms at Peshawar, Nowshera, Mardan and Charsadda Districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Data of the poultry flocks having birds with positive test results of the faecal examination of the coccidiosis at 95% confidence interval and having clinical findings indicative of this disease like enteritis, diarrhoea, bloody faeces, ruffled feathers, anaemia and somnolence were collected directly by interviewing the farmers. That data was analysed by the Risk Matrix of the Subjective Risk Assessment software and logistic regression in the Epi info 7 Software. The results indicated that the coccidiosis was significantly associated with the risk factors like the consumption of poor quality feed, farm workers and veterinarians taking care of different poultry flocks on the same day, unhygienic wet litter, distance between farms and contaminated supply vehicles with mean risk scores 17.00, 13.75, 10.50, 8.00 and 6.75 respectively. Similarly the Odds ratio was 4.61, 3.23, 2.89, 1.04 and 1.02 and p-value for these risk factors was 0.006, 0.012, 0.027, 0.034 and 0.049 respectively. Control measures must be enhanced to prevent these risk factors will results in the eradication of this disease.
Page(s):
593-604
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Journal of Agricultural Research, Volume: 54, Issue: 3, Year: 2016