Arke, A.

Assefa, A.

Ayele, F.

Elias, B.

Mekonnen, Mesfin

Nane, T.

Wieland, Barbara

English

CGSpace

  Small ruminant health intervention calendar in Ethiopia  Mesfin Mekonnen1 ,  Ayalew Assefa2 ,  Tesfalem Nane3 ,  Firdawok Ayele4 ,  Asrat Arke5 ,  Belay El ias6  and Barbara Wieland1   1 Internat ional  L ivestock  Research Inst i tute  2 Sekota  Dry land Agr icu l tura l  Research Center  3 Areka Agr icu l tura l  Research Center  4 Debre B i rhan Agr icu l tura l  Research Center  5 Bonga Agr icu l tura l  Research Center  6 Doyogena Woreda L ivestock  and F i shery  Development  Off ice              December 2019      CGIAR is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for a food-secure future. The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock provides research-based solutions to help smallholder farmers, pastoralists and agro-pastoralists transition to sustainable, resilient livelihoods and to productive enterprises that will help feed future generations. It aims to increase the productivity and profitability of livestock agri-food systems in sustainable ways, making meat, milk and eggs more available and affordable across the developing world. The Program brings together five core partners: the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) with a mandate on livestock; the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which works on forages; the International Center for Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which works on small ruminants and dryland systems; the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) with expertise particularly in animal health and genetics and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) which connects research into development and innovation and scaling processes. This activity was supported by the CRP Livestock. The Program thanks all donors and organizations who globally support its work through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund.  © 2019   This publication is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. To view this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0.  Unless otherwise noted, you are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format), adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially, under the following conditions:   ATTRIBUTION. The work must be attributed, but not in any way that suggests endorsement by the publisher or the author(s).    Cover photo—ILRI/Mesfin Mekonnen      Citation: Mekonnen, M., Assefa, A., Nane, T., Ayele, F., Arke, A., Elias, B. and Wieland, B. 2019. Small ruminant health intervention calendar in Ethiopia. Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI.   Contents                Page  1 Background ....................................................................................................................................... 3 2 Developing the health intervention calendar ................................................................................... 4 The treatment calendar ........................................................................................................................... 4 Applying the calendar ............................................................................................................................... 5 4 References ........................................................................................................................................ 8       2  Abbreviations and acronyms   CRP   CGIAR Research Program FAO   Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations FGD   Focus group discussion GI   Gastrointestinal ILRI   International Livestock Research Institute PPR   Peste des petits ruminants              3   1 Background  Herd health services and production programmes are offered to livestock keepers on the assumption that prevention of selected infectious and non-infectious diseases is less expensive than treating conditions as they occur. Management of herd health is an important and integral part in sheep and goat farming to increase efficiency and productivity of the animals. Good feeding and breeding will not result in maximum production if sheep and goats are not kept in good health. The participatory epidemiology and gender survey conducted by ILRI and ICARDA during the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) Livestock & Fish described the impact of diseases in small ruminants of Ethiopia in a much detail, delineating the impact on men and women farmers. As part of this activity, livestock owners also prioritized several typical multifactorial production diseases, such as pasteurellosis, coenurosis, and gastrointestinal parasites (Alemu et al. 2019).  Sheep and goats in CRP Livestock sites periodically suffer from respiratory diseases and gastro-intestinal parasitosis. This periodic disease occurrence and decreased productivity particularly affect poor households, and in particular those headed by women, as small ruminants are the most commonly found livestock in poorer rural households. All breeds, sex and age groups of sheep and goats are susceptible to respiratory diseases, but more often female and young sheep and goats are affected.  Management of parasites, gastrointestinal worms in particular, is often a primary animal health issue on farms and should form a central part of every small ruminant health management strategy. Currently, the sustainability of sheep and goat production is supported by the use of anthelmintics (FAO 2002), which however needs to be done correctly in order to achieve the desired impact.. Packaging health and management interventions at appropriate seasons considering the production cycle of various classes of animals, reproduction cycles, and seasonality of pathogens is thus a prerequisite to achieve cost-effective livestock management. For this a custom designed calendar at community level is an excellent way to ensure the health of the sheep and goat. In Ethiopia, the key components of such health programs should include strategic vaccination for different respiratory diseases, reproductive animal health, deworming for gastro-intestinal parasites in small ruminants and prevention of coenurosis transmission from dogs.     4  2 Developing the health intervention calendar   To determine if it is necessary to use a specific vaccine, various factors have to be taken into account, such as the location and accessibility, the diseases prevalent in the area and the management system of farmers. The schedule of vaccination for sheep and goat depends on seasonality and epidemiology of a specific disease, age and purpose of raising. For example, regarding age of animal, new-borns are naturally protected from diseases up to about 10 weeks by proper feeding of colostrum immediately after birth. Hence vaccination for key diseases needs to start around that time.  Strategic deworming requires deworming when most of the parasites are in the animal and not in the environment. Seasonality of helminth infection in Ethiopia (Bekele et al. 1987; Tembley et al. 1997) is considered an advantage as it enables strategic use of anthelmintics for control. On the other hand, the life cycle of coenurosis can be interrupted most satisfactorily by control of tape worm infection in dogs and preventing dogs having access to sheep carcasses (Radostitis et al. 1994). Previous participatory epidemiology and serological works (Alemu et al. 2019) conducted by ILRI and partners helped to document the important small ruminant diseases in the value chain sites of Ethiopia and the seasonality of their occurrence. Having this and the current diseases situation in the sites at hand, a group of researchers and veterinarians from partner national research and development institutes put ideas together and decided to update the tentative herd health intervention calendar for small ruminant value chain sites. The treatment calendar The table below (table 1) shows the annual tentative health intervention calendar for sheep and goat in CRP Livestock sites. This calendar shows the schedule of training of farmers on different small ruminant health problems, targeted feeding of pregnant ewes/does and the key disease prevention and control tasks throughout the year.    5  Table 1: The tentative intervention calendar for CRP livestock sites of Ethiopia  Applying the calendar Government authorities, development offices and research institutions will be involved in monitoring the efficacy of the recommended health intervention according to the calendar and can make changes as evidence emerges. The specific target in this activity is to improve timing of activities and through that increase the reach and coverage of the intervention compared to the usual practice. Thus, it is important to engage most of the households who keep small ruminants in the targeted communities. Village/district level multi-stakeholder platforms and community conversations will help in improving the acceptance of the tentative calendar by farmers and sustainability of intervention programmes.  Pre and post vaccination sampling should be done to monitor herd immunity level changes over time. Additionally, pre and post deworming fecal samples should be collected to monitor the change in fecal egg count of GI parasites in sheep, goat and dogs. These activities, combined with monitoring of productivity over time, will help to demonstrate impact of the interventions.   Today, resistance to dewormers is a growing problem for the sheep industry and as dewormers lose their effectiveness, there are fears that economic losses from parasites will increase. Therefore, rational use of anthelmintics is needed in order to prevent further increase of resistance. In addition, there is a need to monitor incidence of resistance and treatment failures. Farmers should also be No Herd health intervention activities Intervention sites Abergelle, Amhara Menz Doyogena Bonga 1. Deworming small ruminants for GI parasites and lungworms June, September, December and March October, January/February and June October, January/February and June October, March and June 2. Training farmers on control of small ruminants, GI parasitosis November and June September/November and December December, January and April December and May 3. Deworming dogs for coenurosis NA NA NA October, January, April and August 4. Vaccination for ovine pasteurellosis March and September October and March/April February and August November and April 5. Vaccination for PPR August September, October and November December December 6. Vaccination for sheep pox September September–October April April 7. Training farmers on control of SR respiratory diseases November and June March December and May March 8. Targeted feeding for pregnant ewes/does December and May Throughout the year March and April May, June, August, December and May 9. Training farmers for reproductive performance November and June March February and July December and May   6  aware of management practices to reduce the number of parasites to which animals are exposed since a good parasite control program consists of more than merely deworming.      7  3   Experiences and lessons learnt The health intervention activities being conducted for the last three years have brought about changes in the health and production performance of small ruminants in the value chain sites. For example, the effectiveness of the previously conducted GI parasites control interventions in the CRP livestock sites was confirmed by using laboratory analysis of faecal samples, which showed a reduction in faecal egg count for different strongyles and fasciola, and by farmers focus group discussions (FGD) which revealed a reduced incidence of disease and increased health. Also, in the FGD villagers participating in the GI parasite control intervention expressed high satisfaction with the improvement of their animals. The awareness of farmers about vaccines and dewormers has been increasing over time as they see changes in the productivity and health condition of their small ruminants, which is a good basis for the more structured approach using a treatment calendar.     8  4  References  Alemu, B., Desta, H., Kinati, W., Mulema, A.A., Gizaw, S. and Wieland, B. 2019. Application of Mixed Methods to Identify Small Ruminant Disease Priorities in Ethiopia. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 6:417. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2019.00417  Bekele, T., Woldeab, T., Lahlou-Kassi, A. and Sherington, J. 1992. Factors affecting morbidity and mortality on-farm and on-station in the Ethiopian highland sheep. Acta Tropica 52: 99–109. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2002. Improved animal health for poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods. FAO Animal Production and Health Paper 153. Rome, Italy: FAO. Radostits, O.M., Leslie, K.E. and Fetrow, J. 1994. Mastitis control in dairy herds. Herd Health Food Animal Production Medicine, 2nd edition. Philadelphia, USA: W.B.saunders, pp. 229–273. Tembely, S., Lahlou-kassi, A., Rege, J.E., Sovani, S., Diedhiou, M.L. and Baker, R.L. 1997. The epidemiology of nematode infections in sheep in a cool tropical environment. Veterinary Parasitology 70: 129–141.  

Small ruminant health intervention calendar in Ethiopia

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Small ruminant health intervention calendar in Ethiopia

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