Abstract
In order to make a survey on the incidence of monieziasis, a series of examinations were carried out on the feces of sheep at a sheep run in the suburbs of Tokyo during a period of one year ending in June, 1958.
A total of 105 animals, including lambs and adults up to 10 years of age, were examined at intervals of about 15 days. The technics adopted for the stool examination were the detection of proglottid, the floatation method with saturated saline solution, and the filtration and precipitation method for ova.
Among the animals surveyed, particularly the lambs showed high incidence rates of Moniezia expansa during the whole period of survey. In most of the lambs, infection seemed to have occurred some time in the period from the latter part of april to the beginning of may, since they showed the highest positive rate of helminth ova in october of the same year.
Infected animals, however, were observed occasionally in winter months, december and january.
The incidence rates among one-year-old sheep were as high as those among the lambs in spring and summer, but thence the rates continued decreasing to as low a level as those among older animals.
Groups of older animals (from 2 to 10 years of age) showed remarkably low levels of incidence and even infected animals were revealed to be positive for helminth ova in the dungs only for a short period of time.
No cases of Moniezia benedeni infection were found in the population. However, a survey on the feces of 39 milk cows in the same run revealed the presence of one carrier of Moniezia benedeni among them.
