Prevalence of cattle diseases and its impacts in dry zone, Sri Lanka

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.