Abstract

Present study aimed to investigate the incidence of Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhiin water tanks and drinker in three different commercial broiler farms and determine the antibiogram to assess the resistance levels against antimicrobial agents. It was noticed that about 72 and 28% of isolated species were E. coli and S. typhi respectively. Moreover the prevalence of both E. coli and S. typhi was significantly high in drinkers (44 and 19% respectively) than water tanks (28 and 9% respectively). The antibiograms of E. colirevealed high resistance to majority of antimicrobial agents used during the course of study including ampicillin (82.6%), cephradine (78.2%), cefotaxime (56.61%), cefixime (65.23%), ciprofloxacin (26%), ofloxacine (21.7%), and gentamycin (100%). Whereas theSalmonella typhi were noticed as resistant to amoxicillin (100%), ampicillin (55.5%), cephradin (66.6%), cefotaxime (66.6%), cefixime (66.6%), ciprofloxacin (22.2%), ofloxacine (33.3%) and gentamycin (100%). About 65% of E. coli and 78% of Salmonella typhi isolates were observed as resistant to more than three antimicrobial agents. We concluded that both water tanks and drinkers of all the three commercial broiler farms were contaminated with multiresistant E. coli and S. typhi and were considered to ultimately get transferred in other animals and human. Standard water purification strategies should be adopted to prevent pathogen contamination.

Key words:  Drinking water, resistance, antimicrobial agents, antibiograms, multi-drug resistance.