Abstract:
Socio-cultural and economic well-beings of rural households in Asian Countries are being
mainly long lasted by rearing cattle and buffalo. However, there are several factors influences
on determining the level of production performances of the cattle while disease outbreak and
dissemination cause severe threat to the above benefits and lead to the negative impact on the
national GDP of the agricultural sector. Therefore, there are needs on identifying the
dominating factors which influence the production performances as well. So that, a
questionnaire was developed and data were gathered and analysed using SPSS (version 22)
software to indicate the significant relationship among the parameters. At the study location,
70.42% were the non-descriptive local breeds in comparison with Indian (21.13%) and
European Crosses (9.45%). Further, 28.12 ± 2.08 0C and 77.29 ± 5.64% were the mean ± SD
of the environmental temperature and relative humidity, respectively. And also, disease such as
Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), Black Quarter (BQ), Bovine Tuberculosis (TB),
Haemorrhagic Septicaemia (HS), Brucellosis, Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD), etc. were
dominant in Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. HS infestation was higher in Batticaloa District
during both Hot (May) and Rainy Season (October) while it was dominant in rainy season
(September) in Ampara District. And also, more than 80% of the infested animals were died
without curing. Meanwhile, FMD infestation was higher than the other diseases where more
than 87% of the people knew about these cases and they were concern over it. In 2018, the
number of deaths were 205 while the clinical identification was meant by 5,240. At the study,
only few respondents (32%) mentioned about their previous experiences in BQ while the
infestation is very much lower at the study location. During the study period, 86.3% deaths
were recorded by BQ. Due to the vaccination, epidemic issue of Bovine Brucellosis was only
22%. Finally, 1,870 calves born to imported cows were tested with ELISA in all over the
country where 2.6% of calves showed positive to BVD. Therefore, these conditions are
critical and indicates the lower potential at Dry Zone and also, further attention is needed to
reach high success rates to overcome the disease impacts, as well.
