Bacteria Associated With Different Poultry Feeds:- Ogu, Doris A

ABSTRACT This study evaluated the bacteriological quality of poultry feeds sold in Umuahia, Abia State Five (5) poultry farms were randomly selected within Umuahia and its environs, from which 20 feed samples were collected for the purpose ofthis work. Four (4) different feed Samples were collected from each poultry farms which includes Starter feed, Growers feed, Finisher feed and layers feed using sterile plastic containers. The predominant bacterial isolates were Salmonella sp, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas sp, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella sp and Shigella sp. The total heterotrophic plate count ranged from 8.00xl0‘'cfu/g to 5.49xl05cfu/g. The total coliform plate count ranged from 3.60x104cfu/g to 9.40x103cfu/g. The total Salmonella Shigella plate count ranged from 4.85xl04cfu/g to 7.15xl05cfu/g. The total Staphyloccocus plate count ranged from 1.40xl04cfu/g to 5.90xl05cfu/g. It was observed that Escherichia coli was the most frequently occurring isolates from the various poultry feeds samples with a percentage occurrence of (27.9%), followed by Staphylococcus aureus with a percentage occurrence of (20.9%), Salmonella sp with a percentage occurrence of (18.6%), Klebsiella sp with an occurrence of (16.3%), then Pseudomonas aeruginosa with a percentage occurrence of (9.3%), whereas Shigella sp had the least percentage occurrence of (7.0%).The percentage distribution of the microbial isolates from the poultry feed samples was also noted, it was observed that among the five different feed types investigated, the layer feed had the highest distribution of bacteria with 15 representing (34.9%), followed by starter feed with 13 representing (30.2%), then the finisher feed had the percentage distribution of 10(23.3%) while the least distribution was found in grower feed sample with 5 representing (11.6%). From the obtained results, it was concluded that the microbiological quality of the poultry feeds is poor as the feeds harbored many different bacterial species at varying levels of occurrence.