Chronicle Editor
Mhlupheki Dube
Often, I get a lot of questions from livestock farmers regarding the health of their animals. Most farmers will be seeking to know what condition is afflicting their animal and how they can treat it. This usually turns out to be a difficult assignment because of the provision of very little information that more often than not is not helpful in isolating the disease.
Livestock farmers should understand that there is a range of diseases that affect animals and the prevalence of these will vary according to places and also time of the year. The nature of the season will also have a bearing on the occurrence and prevalence of diseases and this year is a very good example. Farmers are experiencing a lot of diseases and conditions on their animals because of the excessively wet season that we have had this year. A wet season like this results in proliferation of pests, vectors and pathogens as the conditions are favourable for their reproduction.
There is a directly proportional relationship between proliferation of disease pathogens and vectors, with the affliction of disease to your animals. It is no magic that in winter when conditions are less favourable for most pathogens, disease incidences on your animals significantly go down. However, the aim of this week’s article is to encourage farmers to make proper observation of their diseased animal and note all the unusual behaviour and symptoms that you notice. This can greatly help on isolating the condition or disease and hence provide correct diagnosis and treatment. In most cases you get farmers giving you generic signs and symptoms and this is not helpful at all.
A farmer asks you, “My animal is not feeding, what is the problem and how can I treat it?” Such kind of description for your animal situation is not helpful at all because every sick animal will likely go off feed. As farmers we need to understand that there are a range of diseases and conditions but these will have peculiar symptoms depending on which part of the body the disease is affecting. There are respiratory diseases which obviously will show signs to do with breathing of your animal. These could be coughing, nasal and eye discharge, rapid shallow breathing and salivation. It could be enteric disease and these are caused by infection of the intestinal tract, usually by bacteria and the symptoms will include, diarrhoea, weight loss and fever. Some diseases are neurological in nature and they are caused by bacteria or viruses.
The symptoms will include, loss of co-ordination, strange behaviour and isolation from the herd. There are a wide range of other disease categories and they will exhibit different signs and symptoms. The import of my submission to farmers, therefore is that we need to observe and provide detailed signs and behaviour patterns of our sick animal so that whoever is helping you can narrow down possibilities. This is important especially if it’s a telephone consultation, where the extension worker or livestock expert cannot come and see your animal on the ground. You need to observe the following aspects about the sick animal: Movement — is your animal walking normally or it has a strange gait. Co-ordination — is your animal showing strange behaviour and lack of co-ordination in its movement?
Excreta — is it producing normal dung or there is something wrong with the dung. It could be excessively solid dung, blood-stained dung or diarrhoea. Eyes and nose — Is there any discharge in ether the eyes, the nose or both? What is the nature of the discharge? Urine — is it normal looking urine or there is something wrong with the colour. General behaviour — is the animal showing unusual behaviour like preferring to stay under shade, isolating from the general herd, showing nervousness?
An observation of these aspects and full description should help in narrowing down the nature of the sickness if not the disease itself. This helps with prescription of drugs to use to treat the animal. Livestock farmers who do not stay on farms and rely on helpers should teach their helpers to observe and provide comprehensive signs and symptoms so that when you consult a veterinary officer in town, you have adequate information. Also it helps you to be able to instruct them on which drug to use from the on farm veterinary drugs stock.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo. Feedback [email protected]/ cell 0772851275
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