ABSTRACT

Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an organism responsible for causing deadly infections in man, poultry and several other animal species. Ever since the discovery of MRSA in decade of 1960’s, it has been isolated and reported in live poultry birds and their meat products worldwide. This research is aimed at isolating and identifying methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus among poultry birds. Methicillin resistant s. aureus was isolated from cloaca swab, nostril swab and mouth swab of a poultry bird. The isolates were subjected to gram staining, catalase test, coagulase test and antimicrobial susceptibility test which was carried out against a panel of nine (9) antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, ampiclox, amoxicillin, chloramphenicol, ofloxacin, tetracycline, augmentin, oxacillin and strptomycin). The result obtained showed that over 60% of all isolates were resistant to tetracycline,  43.3%  were resistant  to ciprofloxacin and more than 45% were resistant to oxacillin. Fewer samples were resistant to ampiclox, ofloxacin, chloramphenicol, augmentin and streptomycin and no resistance was seen in amoxicillin. This suggests that poultry birds in the study area are heavily contaminated with methicillin resistant s. aureus. Therefore horizontal gene transfer is suspected which can be controlled by reducing the amount of antibiotics used on poultry birds.