Vaccinate, follow dipping intervals, livestock farmers urged

FARMERS have been urged to start vaccinating their livestock against different diseases and take dipping seriously as the onset of rains brings infections and parasites.

Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Deputy Minister, Davis Marapira, said the rains increase tick population hence the need to dip cattle to prevent tick-borne diseases.

Davis Marapira

He also warned of diseases such as black leg and anthrax hence the need to vaccinate and deworm the animals.
“We want to thank God for giving us rains, which have started at the correct time. We are in mid-November and every area in the country has received some rains,” said Deputy Minister Marapira.

“Rains with livestock can have very positive and negative impacts, especially with the start of the rains. If we look at where we are today, grass is coming up.

“There are some challenges to do with diseases and the most profound diseases around this time are black leg and anthrax. So, this is the correct time where we should do anthrax and black leg vaccinations.”

He also said the grass is growing and farmers also have a challenge dealing with tick population and tick-borne diseases.
The Deputy Minister said to deal with tick-borne diseases, farmers should follow dipping intervals, where those in high tick population areas should dip their animals every four days and those in low tick population areas should dip their cattle once every week.

“We have diseases like the January Disease caused by brown ticks, we also have heart water and red water caused by ticks. If we do dipping correctly, we will reduce the death of our cattle.”

Tick-borne diseases and Theileriosis have been the leading cause of livestock death over the past few years.
To deal with the situation, the Government adopted the Integrated Tick and Tick-Borne Disease Control Strategy (ITTBDCS) whose cornerstone is strategic dipping, where dipping activities are complemented by acaricide resistance monitoring and weekly dipping in the summer season.

Under the strategic dipping approach, tick resistance profiles to specific dipping chemicals are continually evaluated to ensure effective cattle dipping.
Deputy Minister Marapira also encouraged farmers to wait until the end of December to deworm their cattle saying that the animals are still weak and deworming chemicals can affect them.

Farmers must dip their cattle to prevent loss of livestock to tick borne diseases

“We are coming from the El Nino drought so our cattle are bad in terms of condition. If we introduce deworming chemicals, they can be very strong and can affect our cattle, but we have to wait a little bit so that our cattle gain weight,” he said.

“We also encourage feeding of our animals until the end of December. We have feed coming from harvested wheat, all that should be given to our animals.

“All those who have silage should give to animals, we may also add phosphorus, which will help to give phosphorus to animals. We should continuously feed our animals until the grass is about 30cm tall.”

Over 3 500 cattle have died in Matabeleland South between May and September this year due to severe drought conditions caused by the El Niño phenomenon, which has led to widespread depletion of pastures across the region.-chronicle