Buying medicines for your animals

MANY farmers have over the years memorised medicines to buy when their animals are sick or indeed when not sick but just for prophylactic (preventive purposes like acaricides). I would like to discuss the subject following my experience in the field with both small-scale and commercial farmers.

There are today many dealers in animal drugs and their goals (correctly) is to do business and when a farmer or pet owner enters their shop, and says I want to buy that antibiotic they quickly give it to him/her and do not bother to find out why they may be buying the medicine.

I was in Kapiri Mposhi lately and asked the fellow in a shop selling some antibiotics what the use of that antibiotic was and his response was, "it cures all animal diseases". Pretty incorrect, I did not say anything but left for Lusaka thinking how terribly that shop gives those farmers product knowledge. This is not just in Kapiri Mposhi, even in Lusaka. This is happening in most of these shops/chemists without veterinarians or pharmacists. This has resulted in a lot of drug failures in terms of efficacy and has also brought about drug resistance and consequently outbreaks in various areas. I have seen many farmers who had utilised very poor drug combinations and ended up losing their animals.

To ensure profitable buying of these products for your animals, always consult your veterinarian or district vets.

This will enable you get a product that will ensure you get your results. Medicine is very dynamic, and one of the causes of this dynamism is the nature of living organisms like bacteria, which put up defence mechanisms even as they fight for survival in this natural selection process.

This means you should not think because you have been using a tetracycline drug for five years and you have seen some results then you must continue using it over and over again, or because you have been using cypermethrin dip then you must continue with it for ever. Many of the outbreaks I have seen have been due to such things. Therefore, every farmer who is serious with his animals must ensure they are in touch with their vets every time they intend to get some drugs. Your vet must also work out a de-worming, vaccination programme for you that must ensure you have optimum productivity and profitability. Seek professional advice always.

In this era, Zambia is hoping to improve livestock production, we must seriously address these things and one of the ways is to avail our farmers with easily accessible and affordable veterinary services.

Before farmers rush to buy these products, there must be some thorough clinical investigations so that definitive or at least provisional /tentative diagnoses of the conditions are done.

If we are going to avail farmers such services, we will even help society to ensure the animal products like milk and meat are being consumed without drug residues that may lead to complications like drug resistance in humans and this may be realised because of the right use of the drugs. The thinking here is that often times our farmers will buy the medicines and administer the product even when the prognosis (simply the chance for survival) is very poor.

Some farmers have had their animals die in the process just soon after they administer a drug and such carcasses have not found themselves burnt but have somewhat been found in pots. My suggestion to our farmers is let a vet help you buy drugs.

There also several NGOs working in the noble sense towards improving the living standards of our small-scale farmers. These organisations have done a lot of work like constructing plunge dip tanks for our communities, an example is World Vision, they have done very recommendable work in some places in Chongwe.
The only lapses I have seen have been less involvement of technocrats like vets in such undertakings. I would think it would have had a lot more impact if they got even public veterinarians more involved than at a level they have gotten them participate. I have seen nice plunge dips run by communities with very unscientific dip management practices and as a result, I have seen animals dying from a kraal less than 200m from the dip tank.

I guess such NGOs have done some evaluations of their undertakings and they should have had unsatisfactory reflections. Communities, as much as possible, must be made to see that keeping cattle, for example, is a business, thus from the outset, do not give them free things. Again one community with the acaricide provided for free to put in the plunge dip by an NGO with their only role being to fetch water from a nearby stream, were losing their animals because they could not work together to fetch the water! The thing is there is no value attached to absolutely free things may be except the grace of God.

Thus, even in this light, let NGOs work with technocrats before they distribute those free drugs that last after a while and followed by serious outbreaks when they are gone.

May be one of the pre-requisitities they must demand is that the farmers must qualify for a donation by having something that would last say a year.

For example, if the herd a farmer has needs 12litres of the acaricide for one year, they must give him/her 50 per cent after he/she has raised the other. In this way they will attach value to those things donated. NGOs are certainly doing lots of work in this country and it is great work, but most of them have not gotten technocrats who might not even ask for anything, to help them do such things as interventions in disease control.

I hope a series of these columns will guide people in the way we look after animals. We will also look at having a vibrant, beef, dairy and poultry industry in Zambia.




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