Chronicle Editor
Mhlupheki Dube
RECENTLY I lost a beautiful bulling heifer to a suspected Botulism case. It was a painful loss mostly because losing a breeding animal means a minus on the organic growth of your herd.
My stockman hoofed my animals from the veld taking them to the pens as they were due for routine inspection and management. The heifer got recumbent about two kilometres from the pens and the stockman had to dash to come and alert me.
He said the heifer was limping all the way as he brought the animals and something appeared wrong with one of the front legs. Also, it appeared to be swollen somewhere around the neck. Immediately I suspected black leg and so I took penicillin. When I arrived at the scene I tried to feel for the crackling sound around the swollen area, as should be the case with a black leg case but there was no such feel. We tried to assist the heifer to stand up and probably drive it slowly home, we failed as the legs seemed weak and it could not stand on its own.
This doesn’t sound like black leg anymore, could it be some tick-borne disease of some sort or botulism? Diagnostic questions began to race in my mind and so I gave it a jab of an oxtetracycline just in case it was some tick-borne disease. Needless to say, all this did not help because it was probably botulism. Now I am a livestock specialist and losing an animal is probably akin to a doctor losing a patient, it’s not a nice experience.
However, the import of this article is to emphasis the importance of diagnostic difference in animal health management.
Diagnostic difference refers to signs and symptoms that sets two diseases apart. Livestock farmers will agree that most animal diseases will present almost similar symptoms such that it may be difficult to tell the diseases apart and provide the appropriate medication. While this challenge is usually solved by the fact that most drugs are broad spectrum which means they treat a wide range of diseases which are caused by the same family of causative agents, it is always important to pin point the right disease and administer the appropriate drug from the onset. There are usually one or two critical symptoms which tend to define which disease it is and knowing these will help with accurate diagnosis. Usually every disease will likely cause an increase in temperature of the animal, the coat fur will become ruffled, the animal refuses to feed and it will naturally separate from the herd.
So, one has to look for more signs and these may not always be easy to find as some important signs come almost at the terminal end of the disease during which chances of saving the animal become slim.
A quick example is the heartwater disease which is a tick-borne disease and one of its clear signs being that the animal lies down and paddles like a cyclist. At this point it may be too late to save it although cases of recovery are sometimes recorded after it has been given a jab of oxtetracycline.
It is therefore important as farmers to teach our stockman to be observant when there is an animal which is sick so that all its behaviour is reported as this will contribute to an accurate diagnosis. Probably even giving them a chart indicating what to look for when they see an animal showing signs of being sick, rather than just coming to report that the animal is not feeding. Every sick animal will not feed!
Questions around its gait, its behaviour, is it nervous or not; what is the colour of its urine; is it frothing or not? These and other observations can help narrow the range of suspected diseases leading to an accurate diagnosis and possible quick treatment and recovery.
These signs may not be easy to identify when you come to find the animal recumbent and this is the point at which most animal owners are called in by our helpers! Let’s help or helpers, help with diagnostics by giving accurate pertinent descriptions about the diseases.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
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