One of the most common infections in the world is colibacillosis that results in multimilliondollar losses every year. In this study, out of 105 samples recovered from ailing chickens suffering from pericarditis, air saculitis, perihepatitis and cellulitis, 78 E. coli isolates were morphologically and biochemically identified. The antimicrobial profile of the isolates was determined and revealed that, the majority of the isolates were awfully resistant to amoxycillin (100%), lincomycin (100%), rifampicin (100%), clindamycin (100%), doxycycline (100%), spiramycin (100%), amoxicillin + clavulinic acid (100%), sulphamethaxzole + trimethoprim (73%), On the contrary, E. coli strains were extremely sensitive to colistin sulphate (100%), gentamycin (84.46%).
Selected 30 isolates were serologically identified. Phenotypic detection of some virulence traits revealed percentages of 100%, 26.92% and 73% for congored binding activity, mannose resistant haemagglutination (MRH) and biofilm production respectively. PCR was applied on 30 multi-drug resistant E. coli isolates for detection of 4 virulence genes (FimH, hly, papC
and adrA) and 3 resistance genes (BlaTEM, sul1and tetA).The results of PCR denoted that adrA, tetA, blaTEM and sul1 genes were the most dominant genes as they were found in all isolates (100%) shadowed by fimH (80%), papC (60%) and hly (20%)