daniel chigunweEdgar Vhera
Agriculture Reporter
THE Department of Veterinary Services has adopted a cocktail of measures to curb livestock deaths this rainy season, as well as improve animal health, productivity and production.
Chief director Dr Pious Makaya noted livestock diseases originate from internal and external parasite infestations, food, insect vector and soil-borne diseases.
Soil-borne ailments affecting livestock are blackleg, anthrax and tick-borne diseases such as theileriosis (January disease), anaplasmosis (gall sickness) and babesiosis (redwater).
Dr Makaya said in response to these imminent dangers, the department planned to upscale laboratory-based surveillance of animal diseases across the country.
“We have decentralised the diagnostic process to Manicaland, Masvingo, Matabeleland South, Midlands and Matabeleland North to bring the services near farmers. The department plans to further cascade the disease surveillance system to all districts in the country,” he said.
His department was targeting to increase its extension and advisory services to farmers on how to de-worm and dose animals to reduce internal and external parasite infestation.
“Farmers should not de-worm animals with poor body condition (grades one to two) as these might even die with dosing only for those with a three and above body score.
An animal’s body condition measures its fat and muscle coverage, as well as its nutritional status with one being emaciated, severely underweight and life-threateningly thin, while two indicates that it is thin, but not weakened.
To ensure production and consumption of safe food, the department is up-scaling its veterinary public health operations through accelerating the inspection and certification of abattoirs and milk-processing plants.
“These will ensure that all animal derived foods are certified free from food-borne diseases such as beef and pork measles,” he added.
On insect vector-borne diseases, the department will mainly focus on lumpy skin disease, which is prevalent in most districts and encourage farmers to vaccinate against it.
The tsetse control department will expand operations in tsetse infested areas to keep vector-borne diseases like trypanosomiasis, which is transmitted by tsetse fly at minimum.
The disease surveillance is targeting 12 500 square kilometres in the tsetse-infested and high-risk areas this summer season.
Said Dr Makaya: “For soil-borne diseases like blackleg and anthrax, vaccination is key with the former killing more cattle than the latter. Anthrax is, however, a zoonotic disease, meaning it can be transmitted from animals to humans hence its crucial to ensure that animals are vaccinated against it.”
In order to effectively control ticks and tick-borne diseases the department adopted the integrated tick and tick-borne disease control strategy.
“All farmers should do weekly dipping according to the standard operating procedures, as advised by extension staff.
“When there is a breakthrough of tick-borne disease after dipping, we have to use complementary strategies such as vaccinations,” he added.
The department has vaccinations against January disease, gall sickness and redwater.
The vaccines are difficult for farmers to use on their own, as the they require cold-chain maintenance from the central veterinary laboratory to the farm. The vaccines are kept under liquid nitrogen, hence require specialised personnel.
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