Abstract:
Poultry is a promising sector in Bangladesh which is expanding day by day. It is also the
most appropriate income generating sector for rural women as well as landless and
marginal farmers. But the indigenous chickens are affected by various parasites.
Therefore, the present study was aimed to study the prevalence and morphological
identification of gastrointestinal helminths of backyard chicken in Dhaka, Bandarban,
Mymensingh and Pabna. A total of 63 intestines were examined for helminth parasites
from September 2017 to November 2017. This experiment was performed at the
Microbiology and Parasitology Laboratory under the Department of Microbiology and
Parasitology, Sher-e- Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207. The collected
helminths were identified according to the keys and description given by Soulsby (1982)
and Yamaguti (1958). A high rate of helminth infection (100%) was observed in
backyard chicken in Bangladesh. One cestode, Raillietina tetragona (73.01%); two
nematodes, Ascaridia galli (47.61%) and Heterakis gallinarum (38.09%); and two
trematodes, Catatropis verrucosa (23.80%) and Echinostoma revolutum (7.93%) were
encountered during the study. Ascaridia galli was mostly found in small intestine
whereas Heterakis gallinarum was found in the caecum. Echinostoma revolutum and
Raillietina tetragona were collected from both small and large intestines. Catatropis
verrucosa were recovered only from caecum. Out of 63 samples, 25.39% were infected
with single infection while the rest 74.61% were mixed infections. This work strongly
suggests that helminthosis is a very serious problem in backyard chicken and therefore,
appropriate control strategies are needed to design for better production.
