Salmonella Isolation from Poultry Feed and Water and its Risk Factors in Jimma Town, Oromia, Southwest Ethiopia
Bilisuma Disasa *
Jimma University, School of Veterinary Medicine, Oromia, Ethiopia.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Salmonellosis is an important food borne disease of public health significance. Global estimates of the disease burden shows more than 20 million cases and 0.15 million deaths annually. Salmonella is still a global concern of the food and livestock industries. The occurrence, public health aspect and associated factors of Salmonella in most low and middle income countries like Ethiopia is largely unknown and this demands a study in local context. A cross-sectional study was conducted during period of February, 2022 to July, 2022. Accordingly, a total of 72 feed and water samples in which 36 feed samples and 36 water samples from 36 registered poultry farms in Jimma town were collected using purposive sampling method. One feed samples per farm were collected directly from the feed bag using sterile zipped plastic bag, while water samples were collected using sterile 15ml screw cupped test tubes. Samples were cultured using selective isolation method with prior enrichment. Suspected isolates were identified and characterized using conventional biochemical methods. Pearson’s chi-square (x2) was used to evaluate the association of different variables the overall, 8(11.1%) isolates were detected from 72 collected samples. Of these isolate five and three colonies are motile and non-motile respectively. Six water and two feed samples were positive for Salmonella. The contribution of samples for Salmonella positivity was 2 (5.6%) from feed and 6 (16.7%) from drinking water. The highest salmonella isolate was observed in water collected from watering trough at (16.7%) from poultry farms while the lowest was from feed (5.6%) samples. The finding is concluded that salmonella have contaminated chicken’s feed and water as well they also suspected as public health importance. The study conducted that, awareness creation is required regarding hygienic practices of poultry feeds and water to avoid the risk of poultry salmonellosis in poultry farms, and further study should be conducted to confirm, identify the serotype and molecular characterizations of the isolated pathogen.
Keywords: Feed, Ethiopia, Jimma, isolates, poultry farm, salmonella, water