Efficacy of anticoccidial drugs and their impacts on growth performance on caecal coccidiosis in broiler chicken

Coccidiosis is a fatal disease of poultry. In order to combat caecal coccidiosis of broiler, this study was designed to evaluate the comparative efficacy of sulfaclozine, toltrazuril and amprolium. 50 pcs of day old broiler chick were randomized and divided into five groups. The chicks of group T0 kept as non-infected, non-medicated control. The group Ti were kept as infected non treated and other three groups such as T1, T2, T3 were treated with sulfaclozine, toltrazuril and amprolium at a dose rate of 10 mg/kg body weight orally, respectively on day 21 and 24 of age. In chicks of group T1, sulfaclozine was given at rate of 10mg/kg body weight orally. Similarly chicks of group T2 were treated with toltrazuril 10 mg/kg and group T3 were treated with amprolium at the rate of 10 mg/kg body weight orally, respectively. After treatment, the efficacy, body weight, morbidity and mortality were studied. From the present research treatment there were sharp decline of OPG counts in all groups. But the decline was very significant (P<0.05) in Group T3 which was 1.37±0.002 thousand. This study also suggested that the mean initial weight of chicks for all groups were almost similar, which was 37 g and above as recorded on day 1. The pre-infection body weight values at day 10 recorded for all groups were almost similar which was more than 217 g. Significant (P<0.01) increase of body weight was recorded on day 21 following which the highest increase (780.21±1.29 g) was seen in Group T0 chicken (healthy control). After treatment (on day 24), there were significant increase in body weight of all groups used for therapeutic trial with the maximum mean weight gain in Group T3 (790.83±2.10g) which was the nearest value to Group T0 (healthy control). The clinical signs of caecal coccidiosis appeared on day 15 and became severe on day 21. A total of 6 chicks died during the experimental period from Group Ti (untreated affected group) and found 60% mortality. Only 3 birds died in Group T1 treated with sulfaclozine and 2 birds died in group T2 treated with toltrazuril and 2 birds died in group T3 group treated with amprolium.