Efficacy of Some Anticoccidial Drugs on Experimentally Induced Cecal Coccidiosis (E. tsunodai) in Japanese Quails

OOCYSTS of different Eimeria species were isolated from 27 farms of Japanese quail which collected from Al-Dakahlia and Kafr El-Sheikh provinces, Egypt. Eimeria isolates were identified as E. bateri, E. uzura and E. tsunodai in addition to 12 isolates of an unidentified Eimeria species. Efficacy of coccidial prophylactic feed additives (salinomycin and diclazuril) and coccidial water medicaments (amprolium, ethopabate and toltrazuril) were studied in Japanese quails experimentally infected at fourteenth days old with 4.1×10⁴ E. tsunodai sporulated oocysts. All groups which inoculated with E. tsunodai and received any one of the tested drugs had better clinical signs, mortality rate, lesion scores, oocyst output, sporulation percent, weight gain, feed consumption and FCR than the infected non treated group. Although all tested anticoccidials significantly improved the adverse effects of coccidia, yet there was no absolute superiority of any tested drug than the others. Generally we can say that water medicaments gave much better results in E. tsunodai infected quails than the feed additive anticoccidials.