Native Chickens' tapeworms are enteric obligatory intestinal parasites and cause 
losses in chicken production. The present study was conducted in Menouf district, 
Menoufia, Egypt through the year 2022 to determine the prevalence of tapeworms 
in chickens. A special study on morphology, sizes of recovered Raillietina 
echinobothrida, molecular characterization using ITS-2 rDNA region PCR and 
sequencing analysis, and P.M lesion was fully discussed. Intestinal samples of 898 
randomly selected from Baladi chickens were subjected to parasitological 
examination. The cestodes had a prevalence of 12.03%. Raillietina spp. had a 
prevalence of 7.3%. The prevalence of each species was 1.7% for Raillietina 
tetragona, 3.6% for R. echinobothrida, and 2.1% for R. cesticellus. Cotugnia 
digonopora had a prevalence of 4.7%. The prevalence of infection was influenced 
also by season but not by locality. The PCR of  ITS-2 rDNA of R. echinobothrida 
produced specific bands at 615 bp. The sequence had an identity percentage of 
93.69% with the ITS-2 sequences of R. echinobothrida from Egypt and 90.96% with 
the ITS-2 sequence from China. The phylogenetic analysis showed that the sequence 
of ITS-2 of R. echinobothrida from Egypt clustered in the same taxon as the R. 
echinobothrida sequences from Egypt and China. The sequencing analysis using the 
ITS-2 gene will be a valuable tool for species identification. The current study 
presented the prevalence of cestodes in Baladi chickens and the molecular characterization of  R. echinobothrida in  Menouf district, Menoufia, Egypt. The effect 
of locality and season on the prevalence was considered at P < 0.05.