Occurrence and diagnosis of cryptosporidiosis in cattle calves with clinical diarrhoea

Abstract

ABSTRACT Faecal samples were collected from a total of 148 cattle calves, up to 3 months of age, having clinical diarrhoea during different seasons of the study period from November 2017 to October 2018 from organized farms of Uttar Pradesh. All the samples were screened for the presence of cryptosporidium oocysts by staining the faecal smear by a modified Ziehl–Neelsen method. An overall occurrence of 18.2% was observed in calves with clinical cases of mild to severe diarrhoea. The occurrence was highest (25.6%, 19/74) in young calves (up to 1 month age) followed by the calves of age groups 1–2 months (15.2%, 7/46) and 2–3 months (3.5%, 1/28), respectively. The seasonal occurrence was highest in rainy season (26.41%, 14/53) followed by winter season (16.3%, 10/61) and summer season (8.8%, 3/34). All the positive faecal samples were used for the purification of oocyst by modified Shether’s Floatation method with slight modification for the mucoid diarrhoeac faeces to improve the efficacy and recovery of purification. The purified cryptosporidium oocysts were used as candidates for the development of advanced diagnostics, future vaccines and further studies of cryptosporidium in different experimental models.