Parasitocenoses in Productional Rodent Breeds in Czech Republic

BORKOVCOVÁ, M.: Parasitocenoses in productional rodent breeds in Czech Republic. Acta univ. agric. et silvic. Mendel. Brun., 2009, LVII, No. 1, pp. 27–34 Aim of this work was to monitor the occurrence of most common parasites of rodents in 13 commercial and hobby breeds. Most o en detected protozoans belonged to genera Giardia, Eimeria and Cryptosporidium, tapeworms Hymenolepis nana and H. diminuta, nematods Syphacia obvelata and Aspiculuris tetraptera and mites Ornithonyssus bacoti, Laelaps hilaris and Notoedres muris. Diseases broke out mainly during summer months. In animals with clinical signs of illnesses there was an expectation of para si te presence, and most of them were nematods – 80%, tapeworms – 45.2%, protozoans – 41.1% and ectoparasites – 22%. Samples of animals without clinical signs of illnesses contained nematods – 16%, tapeworms – 11%, coccidians – 6% and ectoparasites – 0%. Besides evaluation of all samples, breeding conditions were evaluated as well. Consequently plan was made to remove the causes of parasitoses for each monitored breed. Most dangerous parasites were coccidians of the genus Cryp tos po ri dium, which caused high mortality of the young animals. In Czech Republic high percent of breeds are contaminated with parasites, however, there is little experience in how to deal with these illnesses. Results are weak and low-quality breeds, especially of mice and common rats. Important protection is buying animals from well-known and verifi ed breed with no signs of illness and also regular control of excrement samples. rodent, parasite, commercial breed Commercial rodent breeding started to develop a er the revolution in 1989. Borders were opened and possibility to export rodents especially for feeding purposes came along. Until then usually inbred lines of mice and common rats were bred in steri le laboratories. Today export of rodents for feeding purposes forms 95% of all breeds and every month several millions of rodents are exported from the Czech Republic. Breeders’ knowledge were little in the beginning, as there was no literature availa ble. Today breeders know more, but the most important thing – the health status of animals – still evades them. Breeders usual ly don’t do any veterinary checks and don’t use common drugs such as helminth control cures. In our work we concentrated on uncovering the main (most o en) parasites in selected rodents and sketching the main illnesses and problems in breeds. Observing was done in most o en bred rodents: Syrian hamster Mesocricetus auratus (Waterhouse, 1839), Dzhungarian hamster Phodopus sungorus (Pallas, 1773), Campbell’s Russian dwarf hamster Phodopus campbelli (Thomas, 1905), Roborovskii’s hamster Phodopus roborovskii (Saturnin, 1903), White mouse Mus musculus ICR and MNRI, White rat Rattus norvegicus WISTAR, Multimammate mouse Mastomys coucha (Smith, 1834), Mongolian gerbil Meriones unguiculatus (Milne-Edwards, 1867) and Degu Octodon degus (Molina, 1782). MATERIAL AND METHODS