Effective disease prevention is essential to maintaining the health and productivity of any farm. Whether you’re running a poultry, livestock, or crop farm, preventing disease outbreaks can save significant costs and ensure the sustainability of your operations.
The key to disease prevention lies in proactive management practices, including proper sanitation, biosecurity measures, vaccination programs, and careful monitoring of animal and plant health.
Farmers can reduce the risk of infections, improve the overall welfare of their farm, and ultimately increase yields by adopting these practices.
In this article we will treat the general signs exhibited by a healthy animal, signs of ill health or disease, and general measures of disease prevention on a farm. Because these measures are similar for most livestock. It will be treated in one unit.
Signs of Good Health
There are a number of clinical signs which an animal attendant can look for which can give an indication of the health status of his herd.
A healthy animal is one whose body process function properly so that it can live an active life, grow steadily, reproduce and attain the maximum level of production of which it is genetically capable.
1. Attention to surrounding: A healthy animal shows interest in its surroundings. It is always ready to take flight if worried by anything that happens.
2. Good appetites: Healthy animals have good appetites, both on a pasture where it actively looks for its food and in the house, where it quickly consumes the food given to it ruminants chew the end normally. A first sign if illness is refusal to eat.
3. Animal posture and appearance: A healthy animal carries its head high and is alert. Dejected appearance are indications that all is not well with an animal.
4. Absence of discharge: Health animals do not have any discharge. The eyes are dry and clear, no nasal discharges or inflamed (swollen) running eyes.
5. Maintenance of weight: Healthy adult animals should maintain their weight and young animals increase their body weight. Animals showing obvious loss of body weight are probably unwell.
6. Normal Breathing: Breathing should not be too rapid or erratic and it should be noiseless continuous or intermittent coughing shows that there is an irritation in the respiratory tract.
7. Normal faecal appearance: Faecal appearance indicates the state of the digestive tract . Constipation and diarrhea are signs of digestive disorders. The urine of a healthy animal in pale straw- coloured liquid with a distinct smell.
8. Fairly constant body temperature: The internal body temperatures of healthy animals remain fairly constant at levels which vary according to species that of sheep, goats and cows range between 38.5oC -39oC. Temperatures may however, be raise by exertion particularly in hot weather and by fear, but disease is the principal cause of a rise temperature.
Read Also: How to Market your Matured Fishes for Profit
Signs of ill health
In contrast to the above mentioned signs of good health. Animals that is sick or incubating a disease show some general systemic or local signs that must be carefully observed.
1. Listlessness: Animal lags bind the flock and keeps away from the other animals moving little it at all, and with its head down.
2. Lack of appetite: Animal shows no interest in feed.
3. High temperature: Any temperature above 39.5oC should be considered an indicative of disease probably infectious disease.
4. Congestion of mucosa around the eyes: This congestion if often accompanied by weeping sometimes it appears pale or white in the case of anaemia it may be yellowish in colour.
5. Running nostrils: This usually occurs with discharge of a purulent blood stained liquid. Nasal discharges is often accompanied by coughing.
6. Diarrhoea: This can easily be detected because the animals hindquarters and tail are dirty with swollen left flank.
7. Appearance of feet, udder, testides and sheath: Appearance of feet, udder, testides and sheath may show abnormalities and sheath that are usually manifested as heat, redness and pain on palpation.
Read Also: Reasons why Feeding Fishes is very Important
General Measures of Disease Prevention
Methods of disease prevention will vary according to the particular causal agent and in some cases he species of animal, but there are some few measures which have general application.
1. Quarantine: All newly purchased animals should be isolated and kept separately under observation for a period of 10days. During this period any sign of ill health should be noticed and treated appropriately before the animal is introduce to the herd.
This is important because it prevents the introduction of disease from outside. While in isolation, the animal should be dewormed, deticked and given a broad spectrum antibiotics.
2. Vaccination: Animals should be vaccinated against preventable diseases such as at the right time and age.
3. Avoid overcrowding: Animals should not be overcrowded in a pen or house. Overcrowding allows for easy spread of disease particularly contagious disease such as disease cause by parasites and fungi.
4. Separate sick from healthy animals: Once an animal shows any sign of ill health it should be separated from he healthy ones and treated in isolation. This is to prevent it spreading the disease to others. When the animals is considered fully recovered it should then be reintroduced.
Young animals should be housed separately, adult animals may have infection agents to which they have acquired resistance and do not therefore suffer from the disease, but young animals are susceptible and may catch and develop disease.
5. Toxic materials: This should be kept away from animal, certain chemical compounds and plants are poisonous and may cause disorder it infested such materials should not be allowed to contaminate their food or drinking water. Animals grazing on good pasture tend to avoid poisonous plants.
6. Avoid under nutrition: Under nutrition is a major disease causing error in a farm particularly seen in animals entirely dependent on grazing bare pastures or those under confinement but not properly feed.
7. Regular Dipping/Spraying: Animals should be depped or sprayed regularly against external parasite. Such as ticks and flees. This should be done more often during the rainy season. External parasite causes irritation on the animal and some are agents of disease when external parasites are left unchecked, hey have the overall effect of decreasing productivity.
8. Regular deworming: Deworm animals with broad spectrum anthelminthic once a month during the rainy season and less frequently during the dry season.
In livestock production a lot depends on the knowledge and action of the husbandry man to take care of his animals and prevent or minimize disease incidence on his farm.
His knowledge of measures of disease prevent and signs of ill health will go a long way in improving animal productivity on he farm.
In this article you have learnt the signs and appearance of a healthy animals, signs exhibited by a sick animals and measures that should be taken by a good husbandry man in order to maintain, prevent and minimize outbreak in a farm.
Do you have any questions, suggestions, or contributions? If so, please feel free to use the comment box below to share your thoughts. We also encourage you to kindly share this information with others who might benefit from it. Since we can’t reach everyone at once, we truly appreciate your help in spreading the word. Thank you so much for your support and for sharing!
Read Also: How to Control Pests in the Garden
