Naturinda Kevin
ABSTRACT
The demand for poultry products has increased in the recent past especially as more people realize the nutritional and economic value of chicken and their products. Consequently, many poultry farms have sprung up particularly in and around urban centres. However high mortalities in chicken and reduced individual sizes that are attributed to bacterial infections have been reported. The present study investigated the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of E. coli and Salmonella isolates from the feed, litter and cloacal swab samples of broiler chicken sold in Kalerwe and Kasubi markets from January 2019 to May 2019.
A total of 180 samples were collected from Kalerwe and Kasubi markets where 90 samples( 30 each of litter, feed and cloacal swabs) were from each of the markets. Using standard bacteriological techniques, E. coli and Salmonella were isolated from 126(70%) and 3(1.67%) samples respectively. The overall prevalence of E. coli and Salmonella in Kasubi market was 84.4% and 2.2% respectively and that in Kalerwe market was 55.6% and 1.1% respectively. The overall prevalence of E. coli in feed, litter and cloacal swab samples was 51.7%, 70% & 88.3% respectively and that of Salmonella was 0%, 1.7% & 3.3% respectively.
Furthermore, isolates were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility test by disc diffusion method using six commonly used antibiotics in both human and veterinary practice. The study revealed that E. coli isolates were more sensitive to gentamicin(83.4%) and ciprofloxacin(64.5%) whereas most resistance was to tetracycline(73.8%), ampicillin(70.6%), chloramphenicol(66.7%) and nalidixic acid(56.3%). All Salmonella isolates showed resistance to nalidixic acid, ciprofloxacin and chloramphenicol.
This study showed a high resistance rate against the antibiotics commonly used in poultry and humans. These findings confirm a significant increase in the incidence of antimicrobial resistance in E. coli and Salmonella which is most likely due to using of antibiotics as feed additives for growth promotion and inappropriate use of antibiotics for prevention and treatment of poultry diseases. Furthermore, the results suggest that poultry litter and feed are major sources of E. coli contamination to birds.
