Review

Biological control of animal ticks by poultry birds through IPM techniques

Hakim Ali Sahito¹*, Sarfaraz Nawaz Sanjrani², Muhammad Asif Arain³, Nisar Ahmed Ujjan³ and Hidayatullah Soomro²

Abstract

The study was conducted in order to determine the biological control of ticks by using indigenous poultry birds. Eight (8) indigenous poultry birds of age 2-3 months were purchased. These birds were divided into two groups as at morning and evening on the basis of their offensive attack on chick feed and ticks for half an hour and the feeding behavior also observed. After feeding the ticks the birds were slaughtered to examine the crops and gizzards. The total number of ticks collected from crops and gizzards of both morning and evening were examined, in which the total numbers were 75.51±17.50 (range, 58-93), 8.00±2.00 (range, 6-8) and 83.50±19.50 (range, 64-103) and 23.25±4.32 (range, 13-33), 2.50±0.64 (range, 1-4) and 25.75±4.11 (range, 17-35), respectively. The total number of attempts for traditional chick feed and ticks for both morning and evening groups were 78.5 and 31.87, respectively. From the current study it was concluded that chickens can be used for tick predation, forming a viable biological control component in an integrated tick management system. Chicken consumed large number of ticks in morning as compared to evening. Therefore, they should be used in the morning time for predation. The present study suggested that it is important to make poultry birds behaviorally adopted to tick predation on cattle and be used as a biological control against ticks.

Key words: Poultry, ticks, domestic animals and control.

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