Gastro-intestinal Tract Nematodes of Small Ruminants: Prevalence and Their Identification in and Around Alage, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

A cross sectional study was conducted in small ruminants kept under extensive management system in and around Alage Agricultural Technical Vocational Educational and Training (ATVET) College from October to May, 2018/19. The objectives were set to estimate the prevalence and types of recovered parasites at genus level and assessment of their association with the animal risk factors. A total of 310 randomly collected fecal samples of small ruminants (206 goats and 104 sheep) were examined by simple floatation. In the study area, the overall prevalence of GIT nematodes in small ruminants was 79.68% (247/310). Species specific prevalence of GIT nematode was 78.2% (161/206) and 82.7% (86/104), goats and sheep, respectively. The result showed the existence of single as well as mixed parasitic infections. Accordingly, higher proportion of Haemonchus in sheep (33.72%) and Trichostrongylus in goats (31.1%) represent single infections while Haemonchus with Trichostrongylus in sheep (5.8%), and Trichostrongylus with Oesophagostomum in goats (4.35%) weremixed parasitic infections. Conversely, Bunostomum and Trichuris appeared to be the lowestin proportions in goats (3.73%) and sheep (2.33%) as a single infection whereas Haemonchus with Bunostomum in goats (0.62%) and Trichostrongylus with Bunostomum in sheep (1.2%), as mixed parasitic infections. Analysis of risk factors (species, age, sex and body condition score) revealed that only sex and BCS had significant association with occurrence of parasitic infection (p 0.05) for parasitic infection. In general, the occurrences of high prevalence of nematodes in the study area suggest that GI nematodes are major constraints for production and productivity of small ruminants. Therefore, application of strategic control measures is recommended to reduce the impact of nematodes in ruminants in the current area.