The Prevalence of Poultry Coccidiosis in Intensive Farm and Indivdual Small Holder Poultry Farm in Hawassa Town District

A cross sectional study was conducted from November 2011 to may 2012 to determine the prevalence of coccidial infection and to identify the potential risk factors associated with the infection in intensive poultry farms and individual small holders poultry farms in Hawassa towns. Regarding the methodology, floatation and McMaster techniques were employed on the faeces collected from randomly selected 384 study chickens and examined for presence of coccidial oocysts. According to the study 250 (65.10%) of chickens were found to be positive for coccidial oocysts and 134 (34.89%) of chickens were negative. Among the potential risk factors assessed, age of chicken (P < 0.05), Breed of chickens (local, Koekoak) (P< 0.05), study site (Wukuro, chefe, korem) (P< 0.05) and management systems of chickens (P= 0.000) were significantly associated with the risk of coccidial infection when analyzed by univarate logistic regression. But age of chickens did not show significance association with the risk of coccidial infection when analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis and also management systems of chickens and sex of chickens did not show significance. But breed of chickens (Bovanse (P= 0.010) and local chicken (P= 0.001) reveals significance, study site (wukero, chefe and korem) show significance association with the risk of coccidial infection (P < 0.05) when analyzed by multivariate logistic regression. The mean oocyst count analyzed by analysis of variance indicated the existence of significance difference in the mean of oocyst count among the age categories (F=65.50, P=0.00), study site (F=14.48, P= 0.000). Bonferroni multiple comparasion test indicated that the mean oocyst count is significantly greater in chicken of age 6-12 months (P= 0.000) and age less than 6 months of old chickens (P= 0.004). Other two comparasion of mean between age group of 6-12 and age greater than 12 months did not show significance difference (P= 0.059).