Abstract

Pesticide use in the modern agriculture, animal husbandry and public health practices has increased enormously. Pesticides affect man, environment and wild life including birds. Pesticides including fungicides, herbicides and insecticides are the major class of chemicals deliberately released into the environment because of their indiscriminate use in various agricultural practices. Pesticides are present in air, soil and water which leave their residue in food chain causing deleterious effect on the health status of man and animals including poultry. After ingestion, they get into blood stream lodging themselves in various tissues causing adverse effects on health and production of livestock and poultry resulting in substantial economic losses. Fipronil was discovered and developed by Rhone-Poulenc between 1985- 1987 and placed in the market in 1993. It is the member of new and relatively small class of pesticides, the phenyl pyrazoles, which are principally chemicals with an herbicidal effect. According to data obtained from metabolic studies showed that there was potential for bioaccumulation of the Fipronil in fatty tissues, fish, fibre crops and food crops. Limited investigations have been carried on effect of fipronil in health of animals and man. Therefore present study was designed to study the effect of fipronil toxicity in white leghorn cockerels. Twenty white leg horn male chickens of one month old weighing about 150 to 200 g were procured and kept at Instructional Poultry Farm Nagla, Pantnagar. The birds in poultry shed in deep litter system under standard managemental conditions. They were randomly divided into four groups of 5 birds each. After one week of adaptation period, different doses of Fipronil were administered orally through feed at 1, 5 and 10 ppm levels to groups G1, G2 and G3 respectively for 100 days daily. The birds of group “C” served as control. After every 20 days blood was taken from each bird for study of different parameters. The experiment was conducted for a period of 100 days. All the hematological parameters viz. hemoglobin, packed cell volume, total erythrocyte count and differential leucocyte count were performed on the day of blood collection as per the standard method. Hematological parameters showed significant decrease leading to anemia and significant decrease in total leucocyte count leading to suppression in cell mediated immune response in different doses of fipronil treated birds in comparison to birds of control group.

Key words: Fipronil toxicity, white leghorn cockerels, haematological parameters.