Occurrence of Ovine Haemonchosis Slaughtered at Abergele Export Abattoir, Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

A cross sectional study was conducted at Abergele export abattoir with the objectives of determining the occurrence of ovine haemonchosis and investigating potential risk factors associated with them. During the study period, a total of 380 abomasums of sheep, collected from randomly selected male sheep were examined on postmortem for the presence or absence of the parasite according to standard procedures. Among those, 200 sheep were positive for Haemonchus contortus with overall occurrence of 52.6%. The findings of this study exposed that the occurrence of ovine haemonchosis was more frequently recorded in adult (greater than one year) (28.6%) than in young (less than one year) sheep (23.9%). Based on body condition it was noticed that high occurrence was recorded in animals with medium body condition (29.7%), followed by poor body condition (13.2%) and the lowest were recorded in animals with good body condition (9.7 %).The highest occurrence was recorded during the month of April (16.3%), followed by February (12.9%), January (9.2%), December (8.2%) and the lowest occurrence was recorded during the month of March (6.05%). In this study, there was no statistically significant difference (P>0.05) observed with the risk factor like age, origin and months of inspection in relation to the occurrence of Haemonchus contortus. However, there was statistically significant difference (P<0.05) observed among the risk factors (body condition) in relation to the occurrence of Haemonchus contortus. In conclusion, the study revealed that the occurrence of ovine haemoncosis is high in Abergelle export abattoir slaughtered sheep and consequently affects the productivity of the sector. Hence appropriate disease prevention and control measures are requiring to be undertaken to reduce its impact.