The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
PASSING by one farm in Mangwe District I came across some villagers struggling with a recumbent cow.
A recumbent animal is one which is failing to rise on its own and needs help to be lifted and in some extreme cases it may fail to stand on its own.
It was a cow in poor condition but not too emaciated to warrant it to be recumbent. On observation I noticed that the cow was in calf and probably on its last trimester and the unborn calf was becoming heavy for it due to its body condition. It was clearly a nutritional issue of having let the cow deteriorate to below a body condition which would allow it to comfortably carry its calf until calving down.
However, what caught my attention was not the recumbent poorly conditioned cow but the conversation going around the small group of young men who were trying to lift the cow. It was clearly a group of stockmen, the helping hands in the village and not owners of homesteads in the village. One guy says its botulism and the word was obviously pronounced in a manner that you would be lucky to recognise the disease being referred to. Another one says its blackleg and the list of random thrown suspected diseases kept growing. When I engaged one of them why he thought it was botulism there was no supporting information but it was just a term plugged from diseases vocabulary which he probably met when he worked at some other home as a stockman some time ago.
What worries me, however, is not the uniformed diseases trouble shooting but the acceptance of such information in communities by equally less knowledgeable livestock farmers resulting in wrong treatment action being taken.
Here was an animal succumbing to poor nutritional condition in its environment because of depleted grazing and lack of supplementation from the owner and it was now being diagnosed by the stockmen for something else. This means instead of paying attention to improving the nutritional status of the animal by bringing in commercial stock feed to supplement it, the owner may start running around seeking how to treat botulism! My counsel to farmers is to seek professional advice always when it concerns your animal. There are a lot of agricultural professionals in the community and it will help you to consult them.
There are veterinary officers, Agritex officers and other retired extension officers who will certainly help with providing correct and appropriate information so that you take corrective action in time. It must be appreciated that dealing with an animal is a delicate matter and you need to at least have an appreciation of what you are doing not just gambling with somebody’s investment.
At times farmers lose their animals simply because of the penchant to consult the wrong people leaving trained professionals in that field. Admittedly some of the trained people can be painfully clueless but they will know how to search for correct answers.
I also appreciate that there are some people who are not theoretically agricultural trained but have learnt a lot through practical exposure and these can be helpful as well.
I know some stockmen that can now do some complex veterinary procedures such as assisting dystocia cases and rectifying uterine prolapse cases.
These are not found in every village and hence the need to consult right professionals for correct assistance.
One can easily damage some nerves such as obturator nerves if improper help is given during a complicated calving process and this will have a more damaging effect as your animal may fail to rise on its own if such nerves are damaged. There is a reason why Government invests in employing personnel and deploying them even at ward level in some cases for easy access by farmers. Let us utilise these Government provided professionals so that we grow our herds and contribute to national development.
Uyabonga umntakamaKhumalo.
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