Histopathomorphological alterations in natural infestation of intestinal coccidiosis in backyard chicken

Abstract

Most of the domestic and wild animals and birds, the Eimeridae is a family that develops within their digestive tract. The following serotypes of Eimeria are recognized as having infected chickens: E. tenella, E. acervulina, E. brunetti, E. maxima, E. mitis, E. necatrix and E. praecox. This study was the part of Masters Research project which included the incidence of coccidiosis and pathomorphological alteration in chickens from backyard poultry farms in West Medinipur district of West Bengal and collected samples were sent to the Department of Veterinary Parasitology, WBUAFS, Kolkata for confirmatory diagnosis. The clinical signs observed include greenish, yellowish, brown bloody diarrhoea, inactivity, off fed, weight lost, huddling, drop in feed input, drop in product, emaciation, comb and wattles blench, anemia and unforeseen death. Gross lesions include ballooned and haemorrhagic intestine while histopathological lesions revealed loss of epithelial layers, traffic of blood vessels which indicated dislocation followed by leakage of blood, severe mucosal edema, necrosis of submucosa, loss of villi and pronounced haemorrhages, presence of oocyst within the intestinal villi and lymphoid cells showing hyperplasia. From this, we can conclude that not only clinical signs but also gross and histopathological examinations can be used as assessment tools for coccidiosis.