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Precious Manomano-Herald Reporter
Farmers have hailed Government efforts to protect the national herd from tick borne diseases that have killed nearly 500 000 cattle in the rainy seasons in the past few years.
Zimbabwe is moving ahead on several fronts to fight tick-borne diseases by building, rebuilding and renovating dip tanks as well as manufacturing vaccines.
During the wet season, animals are susceptible to many challenges, and January Disease is common between December and March and is spread through the bite of the brown ear tick.
The Government is accelerating plans to build the national herd to six million in line with the country’s agricultural growth recovery plan to meet national demand for meat and dairy products, and then to resume export trade.
This requires not just breeding more cattle, but also ensuring that none are killed by disease.
Currently, the national herd stands at 5,5 million and various measures have been put in place to improve the quality of livestock including artificial insemination which involves cross breeding with semen from selected quality bulls and vaccination programmes.
A blitz tick-grease programme under the Presidential Inputs Scheme has also been a major boost in the fight against January disease and the programme will continue this season.
Former Zimbabwe National Farmers Union vice president Mr Edward Dune said Government’s efforts to protect the national herd were greatly appreciated, adding that there was a great improvement shown so far in safeguarding cattle from tick-borne diseases.
“We can now feel a great improvement in our national herd. We lost thousands of cattle in the past few years due to tick-borne diseases, but today we are celebrating these efforts. These deaths are very low. In Manicaland we are still safe. Farmer awareness campaigns are helping a lot. We thank the Veterinary Department for providing enough information to the importance of dipping to our farmers. We also expect this to happen in other areas,” he said.
Mr Dune said a blitz tick-grease programme under the Presidential Inputs Scheme, which has been running for the past two seasons, had been a major boost in the fight against January disease.
Zimbabwe Indigenous Women Farmers Association Trust president Mrs Depinah Nkomo said Government’s efforts so far reflected its commitment towards improving the agricultural sector.
“We lost thousands of livestock in the sector for the past years, but now cattle mortality has significantly dropped. We are grateful, the Government is working hard to ensure that our livestock are well protected,” she said.
Zimbabwe National Farmers Union president Mrs Monica Chinamasa also said cattle mortality due to tick borne disease is currently minimised in Manicaland and dipping helped immensely to fight those diseases.
Recently, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Permanent Secretary Dr John Basera said the only and sustainable way to contain January disease is to dip for one and half years to two years.
He urged farmers to cooperate by bringing cattle to dip tanks. Government was doing its part by resuscitating dip tanks and securing chemicals to fight the disease.
“We need to dip religiously every week, have intensive dipping and continuously raising awareness to the importance of dipping. Government has made some efforts, but it is the responsibility of the cattle owner,” he said.
Last week, Department of Veterinary Services chief director Dr Josphat Nyika said intensive dipping is encouraged to save livestock from tick-borne diseases.
He encourages farmers to adopt the 5-5-4 dipping regime, where a farmer is expected to dip cattle after 5 days then after 5 days followed by another four-day interval.
Online Reporter