Multidrug-resistant enterobacteria colonize commercial day-old broiler chicks in Nigeria

Vet World Vol.12 March-2019 Article-11

Research Article

Veterinary World, 12(3): 418-423

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2019.418-423

Obianuju Nkiruka Okorafor¹, Madubuike Umunna Anyanwu², Emmanuel Onyeka Nwafor¹, George Nnamdi Anosa¹, and Rita Ijeoma Udegbunam³

1. Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.
2. Department of Veterinary Pathology and Microbiology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.
3. Department of Veterinary Surgery, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.

Background and Aim: This study was conducted to isolate generic enterobacteria from day-old broiler chicks in Nigeria, determine the antibacterial resistance profile, and assess multidrug resistance.

Materials and Methods: The birds were sourced from five purposively-selected hatcheries (identified as A, B, C, D and E) in Southwest Nigeria. Non-duplicate cloacal swabs were collected from a total of 75 (15 birds per hatchery) randomly selected apparently healthy birds. Sampling was done in three batches of five chicks per batch at 2-week interval. Isolation of enterobacteria was done using MacConkey agar. The resistance of the isolates was determined using the disk diffusion method.

Results: Of 15 processed samples of birds from each hatchery, all samples from hatcheries B, D, and E, 10 (66.7%) and 14 (93.3%) samples from hatcheries A and C, respectively, yielded pure cultures of Escherichia coli. Klebsiella was also isolated from 1 (7.1%) of the 14 and 2 (13.2%) of the 15 growth-positive samples from hatcheries C and D, respectively. The range of resistance among E. coli isolates was tetracycline (86.7-100%), ampicillin (80-100%), gentamicin (60-85.7%), sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (46.7-92.9%), enrofloxacin (40-100%), ciprofloxacin (26.7-86.7%), streptomycin (10-80%), cefotaxime (26.7-73.3%), amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (13.3-60%), and ceftazidime (6.7-40%). Klebsiella and all E. coli isolate from chicks of hatcheries B, C, and E, 80 and 93.3% of those from chicks of hatcheries A and D, respectively, exhibited resistance to three or more classes of antibacterial agents.

Conclusion: Commercial day-old broiler chicks in Nigeria are colonized by multidrug-resistant coliforms (E. coli and Klebsiella) and are potential reservoirs and disseminators of these organisms. Keywords: avian, coliforms, day-old chicks, Enterobacteriaceae, multidrug resistant.

Keywords: avian, coliforms, day-old chicks, Enterobacteriaceae, multidrug resistant.

How to cite this article: Okorafor ON, Anyanwu MU, Nwafor EO, Anosa GN, Udegbunam RI (2019) Multidrug-resistant enterobacteria colonize commercial day-old broiler chicks in Nigeria, Veterinary World, 12(3): 418-423.

Received: 01-10-2018 Accepted: 08-02-2019 Published online: 16-03-2019

Corresponding author: Madubuike Umunna Anyanwu E-mail: madubuike.anyanwu@unn.edu.ng

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2019.418-423

Copyright: Okorafor, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.