Prevalence of Rumen and Reticulum Foreign Body in Cattle Slaughtered at Jimma Municipal Abattoir, South West Ethiopia

Author(s): Abraham Adugna Tilahun, Gelan Dule Dahesa.

Foreign body ingestion is a non-infectious illness of the fore stomach in animals that has been shown to block the digestive activities of the gastrointestinal tract. A cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2024 to April 2024 at Jimma municipal Abattoir, Oromia Regional State, Southwest Ethiopia, with the objectives to assess the prevalence of rumen and reticulum foreign bodies, identify types of foreign bodies and associated risk factors. The study animals were selected by using simple random sampling. Both ante mortem and postmortem examinations were employed to examine the live animal and for the recovery of foreign bodies from rumen and reticulum after slaughter, respectively. The chi-square test (χ2 -test) was applied to test if there is any statistically significant association with risk factors. From the total of 300 examined cattle, 79 (26.33%) (95% CI: 21.6 - 31.6) were found positive for the occurrence of indigestible foreign bodies. When the prevalence was compared between among different age groups, different body condition score and origin higher prevalence of foreign bodies 26.94%, 34.38%, 37.94%, 57.14%, were observed in female, age older than 10 years, animal having poor body condition score and unknown area respectively. There is higher significance in different body condition scores and animals originated from different areas with p<0.05. The types of foreign bodies detected were plastics, ropes clothes, wires and both plastic and ropes. From these plastics 39 (49.37%), rope 23 (29.11%), cloth 11(13.92%), wire 4 (5.06%) and both plastic and ropes 2 (2.53) were more frequently encountered of the positive cases, respectively. From the rumen, reticulum and both rumen and reticulum the indigestible foreign bodies were majorly found in rumen 20.3% followed by reticulum 5.33% and less in both rumen and reticulum 0.67% with a statistical difference (p < 0.05). It concluded that appropriate solid waste disposal system and it is important to raise awareness to the community about adequate feed supply to the livestock needs to be implemented in the study area to prevent health risk of cattle.