Parasitic Burden and Its Relation with the Body Weight of Free Range Chicken in Oil Palm Dominated Sandakan District of Malaysian Borneo

Abstract

An investigation was conducted on 40 free range chicken to figure out their parasitic burden relating to the body weight (BW). The chicken was found to be infested with the ectoparasites; Dermanyssus gallinae (prevalence 78%), Lipeurus caponis (80%) and Menopon gallinae (100%), and endoparasites; Oxyspirura mansoni (68%), Syngamus trachea (5%), Ascaridia galli (30%), Raillietina cesticillus (90%) and Heterakis gallinae (83%). The highest and lowest count of the parasites were 164/chicken for O. mansoni and 14/chicken for S. trachea, respectively. The count of the parasites were not influenced by the categories of the chicken, except L. caponis and R. cesticillus those were significantly influenced by the sex and age of the chicken respectively. BW of the chicken had always negative correlation with their parasitic load and this correlation was statistically significant in the male chicken. However, a single chicken harbored minimum 3 to maximum 8 species of parasites and 38% of the chicken harbored maximum 6 species of parasites simultaneously in their body. Results suggested that the free range chicken in the study area was suffering from strong parasitic problem by the cost of their BW.