Rabbit Gastrointestinal Parasites Prevalence and Farmer’s Knowledge in Maseru District, Lesotho

Abstract

Rabbitry holds an important position for sustainable agriculture in developing countries and support vast majority of socioeconomic activities globally. However inappropriate management practices on control of gastrointestinal parasites infesting rabbits have hindered successful development of this sector. Therefore the study was carried out to evaluate rabbit owner’s knowledge on health practices and to develop effective management strategies aimed at controlling gastrointestinal parasites of rabbits. The cross sectional study was conducted and a total of 300 faecal samples were collected from rabbits in six communities of Maseru district. In addition 120 farmers were interviewed to assess farmers’ demographics, factors affecting growth of rabbit production and viability of rabbit production in relation to their management practices. Descriptive statistics was used in which to give report of collected data and percentages were used to measure knowledge of the respondents. The data was further subjected to Chi-square test to observe the association between farmers’ knowledge on health management practices on rabbits. Considering prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites of rabbits, a modified McMaster egg counting technique was used to examine the faecal samples. Data was analyzed using generalized linear model and subjected to binary logistic regression to determine prevalence of gastro-intestinal parasites in response to location, sex and age of rabbits. The findings indicated that rabbit farming mostly dominated by male farmers 90% than females 10%. Additionally, farmers’ gender showed no significance (p>0.05) with flock size of rabbits, most farming household were made up age ranging from 14 to 58 years, and majority of them were unmarried. The overall prevalence of GIPs was 76%, 23% and 13% for coccidia, nematodes and cestodes respectively. Matala and Stadium Area had the highest 95% prevalence of coccidia followed by Qoaling 75%, Khubetsoana 71%, Abia 63% and Lithabaneng 59%.