©1994-2018 All Rights Reserved. Online
Journal of Veterinary Research. You may not store these pages in any
form except for your own personal use. All other usage or distribution is
illegal under international copyright treaties. Permission to
use any of these pages in any other way besides the before mentioned must be
gained in writing from the publisher. This article is exclusively
copyrighted in its entirety to OJVR publications. This article may be copied
once but may not be, reproduced or re-transmitted without the express
permission of the editors.
OJVRTM
Online Journal of Veterinary Research©
Volume 8:79-84, 2004. Extensively redacted 2018.
E. coli infection and antibiotic resistance in moribund and healthy broilers.
ABSTRACT
Ahmad MD,
Rauf A, Rai MF., E. coli infection and antibiotic resistance in moribund and
healthy broilers, Onl J Vet Res., 8:79-84, 2004. Incidence of Escherichia coli infection and antibiotic resistance
from moribund and healthy broilers at slaughter is reported. Of 103 strains of E.
coli, 52 were isolated from
moribund birds submitted for postmortem examination and 51 from the intestinal
contents of the healthy birds brought from different slaughter points. In
vitro pathogenicity of E. coli was determined by growth
characteristics of isolated strains on Congo-red medium. Pathogenic strains
were identified by production of brick red colonies on media after 48h
incubation at 37 oC. These isolates were
tested for in vitro antibiotic susceptibility by disc diffusion. In moribund birds, we
found prevalence for pathogenic Escherichia coli to be 86.53% compared
with 13.46% for non-pathogenic strains. All strains tested were sensitive to enorfloxacin with an inhibitory zone of 2.11 ± 0.20 cm. Norfloxacin was the second antibiotic of choice (2.11 ± 0.9
cm). The majority of isolates were highly resistant to erythromycin and trimethoprim.
KEY WORDS: Escherichia coli, postmortem, slaughter age, broilers,
antibiotic resistance