BACTERIA ASSOCIATED WITH POULTRY FEED IN MOUAU POULTRY FARM

CHAPTER ONE

1.1   INTRODUCTION

Livestock feeds are blended or processed products of plant and animal origin whose principal purpose is to meet animal’s nutritional needs. Ingredients used in livestock feeds include grains, cereals, meat and meat by-products and food by-products. A number of feed and feed ingredients are imported and feeds are often produced as processed finished or compound feeds. Livestock feeds include those for livestock (including horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, fish, rabbits and poultry) and companion animals (including cats and dogs). Livestock feed may serve as a substrate for a wide variety of microorganisms (Stotzky, 1997; Israel, Sunday, Mansong and Ubong, 2016). Some of the micro-flora are adapted to the desiccated conditions in soil and are transferred by insects; dust and wind to similar niche bacterial. They are capable of degrading organic matter and/or exist in a survival state until the moisture is high enough for bacterial action. While other microorganisms, primary moulds, actively grow within stored seeds including the low amount of available moisture as substrates (Crump et al., 2002).

Poultry feeds are good and nourishing food supplements with varying constituents of, among others, animal and vegetable proteins, cereals, essential amino acids, minerals, salts, antibiotics, vitamin pre-mix and antioxidants. Since commercial poultry feeds and feed ingredients are usually sourced from various locations, they remain the major vehicles for the introduction of both commensal and pathogenic microbes to the farm environment (Okoli et al., 2005). During the past decades, livestock industry in Nigeria grew at the rate of 20% per annum (Boddington, 2007) and nowadays, it is one of the fastest growing agro-based enterprises in the country (FEB, 2015). About 18.6% of the GDP comes from the agricultural sector, and one third of which is from the livestock industry, where a large number of private-owned companies produce livestock feeds of varying standards (Khan, 2008).

The chemical and nutritional constituents of poultry feeds are important for poultry nutrition and growth, but are only part of the livestock feed matrix. From an ecological standpoint, harvested grains are not only ingredients for poultry diet, but can act as substrate and transmission vector for simple unicellular prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Feed may contain diverse microflora that is acquired from multiple environmental sources, including dust, soil, water and insects. Feed materials may be inoculated at any time during growing, harvesting, processing, storage and dispersal of the feed. According to Maciorowski et al., (2004), microflora found in feed materials may come from a variety of ecological niches, which may include soil and gastrointestinal tracts, and have to adapt to the conditions found in animal feed and feed components in order to survive. The microbial diversity found in different feeds is dependent on the water activity, oxygen tension, pH and nutrient composition of the feed matrix. Microflora can decrease grain value through nutritional changes, physical damage or the production of toxins deleterious to animal health.

For the purpose of this report, poultry feeds will refer to finished feeds or compound feeds, including blended and mash type feeds, but exclude pasture-based feeds and those for pet food. The majority of finished feed manufactured in Nigeria is produced to meet the requirements of commercial poultry production. In recent years, there has been a diversification in feed ingredients available and feeding practices in Nigeria. For example, there has been an increased use of compound feeds in the dairy industry, reflecting the rapid growth and intensification in that sector. In addition, there is a growing range of imported feed and feed ingredients entering Nigeria from a variety of overseas sources, which poses an additional risk for the introduction of pathogens and contaminates into the food chain (Cressey et al., 2011; Davidson and Pearson, 2009a).

More than 27 different species of bacteria have been isolated from normal, ready to cook, poultry meat a large number of publications incriminate poultry as origin of food-borne infection out-breaks.

All four basic types of poultry feeds viz., starters, growers, finishers and layers, may potentially become contaminated with food borne pathogenic microbes during harvesting, processing, handling, and marketing of the bagged feeds (Chowdhuri, 2011). Prominent bacterial species in the livestock feeds include Bacillus, Escherichia, Salmonella, Enterococcus, Campylobacter, Clostridium and Lactobacillus that have been shown to be of critical importance in country like Nigeria ( Hossain et al.,2014) and of microbial infections in poultry include contaminated feeds, drinking water elsewhere in the world (Buchannan et al.,1985). Several studies have demonstrated that the sources, utensils, personnel, human wastes, rodents and hatchery related unhygienic activities (Okonkwo et al., 2010). Recently, poultry feeds have been implicated in several poultry diseases of viral, bacterial and fungal origin, suggesting that such feeds can potentially act as carriers for human as well as animal pathogens (Mohanta et al ., 2016). Moreover, poultry environment like soil and drinking water, faeces, litters and wastes (Igbinosa, 2014), live, moribund and dead chickens , meat, carcass, viscera, eggs, and poultry by-products (Hossain et al.,2008) could also carry microbes of public and veterinary health importance.

Salmonella remains the pathogen of focus in poultry feed due to the organisms’ ability to infect food-producing birds and thereby potentially contributing to human foodborne disease (Cressey et al., 2011; Crump et al., 2002; Sapkota et al., 2007). Salmonella Agona infections in humans in the United States (US) and countries within the European Union (EU) have been traced to contaminated poultry feed (Crump et al., 2002). In New Zealand, an increase in human cases of Salmonella Typhimurium DT1 was observed following an incident where contaminated animal feed (fish meal) was fed to poultry (Wong, 2003).

Modern production facilities for poultry tend to be large and intensive. A very large number of poultry are maintained in each production unit. Under these conditions, it is nearly impossible to present the spread of a microorganism (such as Salmonella, Listeria, and Campylobacter) are aimed, inter-alias, towards prevention of the infection or colonization of the livestock on the farm by various means of inhibiting possible entrances of disease producing agents into the farm. High priority is given to decontamination of livestock feed, since all means employed to prevent infection will fail unless a supply of decontaminated feed is ensured.

The role of poultry feed as a vector of pathogenic microorganisms; in particular Salmonella has been well documented in the literature of the last decades, (Lapidot 1998). Feed ingredients of animals’ origin, such as fish meal, meat and bone meats, slaughter ofals and feather meals are reported to be usually contaminated. However, ingredients of plant origin, such as oil-seed lake meals, are also reported to be contaminated, albeit at a relatively lower frequency.

Therefore, the aims of the present study is to investigate the isolation and identification of bacteria found in livestock (Poultry) feed gotten from MOUAU poultry farm.

1.2       Statement of Problem

The presence of the bacteria in all the poultry feed calls for attention in the storage strategies employed by the poultry feed manufacturers, the ware house condition, distributors and the sellers. In recent years, with the increasing in density of poultry and infectious diseases in poultry caused by pathogenic bacteria, the healthy development of the poultry industry is facing serious threat. These result in lower feed conversion rates, the declining in egg laying rates of hens as well as fertilization rates, slower growth, the increasing rejection rates of dead chickens and even a large number of deaths.

Air tight storage of the various feeds is not advisable because offensive odour might result when there is prevention of outflow and inflow of air (Leonard, 1981). The condition of feed storage and handling could be a source of contamination. When feeds are unhygienically handled and stored, there could be a build-up of microbial contaminants.

Poor management of farming, overcrowding, dirty sanitation environment, bad ventilation, poor feed quality and stress can cause birds to infect with diseases. Therefore, how to take effective measures to prevent and control infectious diseases from birds is the most important task.

Poultry feed is known to contain Salmonella and other microorganisms (Lapidot, 2011). It is therefore pertinent to carry out microbiological examination of commercially prepared poultry feeds to ascertain their safety to birds.           

1.5.   General Objective of the Study

The general objective of the study involves the Isolation, Identification and Enumeration of Bacteria found in Poultry feed.

1.6    Specific aims of The Study

The present study was aimed to investigate the following aspects:

a)     To isolate bacteria and to determine the total viable bacterial count from livestock (poultry) feed.

b)    To identify the bacteria isolated from the livestock (poultry) feed.

c)     To determine the percentage occurrence of bacterial isolates in livestock (poultry) feed.

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