Insect and Tick control / Hygiene

In East Africa many serious diseases are transferred by ticks. This is less severe in Zero-grazing units than in animals grazing pastures and interacting with a certain amount of wildlife. The picture shows a typical cattle dip, preventing insect and particularly tick borne diseases, by letting the animals jump into a dip filled water with added acaricide (tick poison). Prevention of tick borne diseases is by spraying, dipping or using Pour-on chemicals to get rid of the ticks.

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Tick control through Acaricides​

There are several different types of acaricides available on the market and it is advisable to keep interchanging them to avoid ticks becoming resistant. This needs professional guidance, by mistake farmers might just change between different products that belong to the same class of acaricide. Several botanicals have also been found to be effective in place of acaricides.

For organic farmers it always important to have as little poison on the farm as possible, and to choose the least harmful types of acaricides. Many dips have serious problems. However even organic farmers have to spray their animals, as regulations demand that the animals are kept healthy and comfortable. For smallholders and organic farmers there are alternatives like hand-spraying by knapsack.

Dips​

These are structures built on ranches or communally where animals are driven through a bath of acaricides. It is an easy procedure but quite costly, and there can often be cases of animals that swallow some amount of dip solution with varying results from death of the animal to some degree of poisoning. - Heavily contaminated dirty dip fluid may cause infections in animals going through the dip (e.g. inside the ears).

Dips must be carefully maintained to ensure the concentration of acaricides is appropriate at all times. Too low concentration can lead to ineffective tick control and tick resistance to the acaricide used. Many dips have serious problems and are non-functional. There is also the problem of environmental pollution when dips need to be cleaned out. Where to throw all the old toxic waste?

Spray-races​

Spray races are modernized dips, where cattle walk through a set of nozzles spraying acaricides to cover the whole animal. The spraying is done mechanically by pumps, with very little need for human labour. It is less hazardous than dips, and as the left over spray is recollected, strained and reused there is less waste of acaricides. The concentration of acaricides is also much easier to regulate than for dips. As animals walk into the spray race they prepare themselves to be sprayed by closing their mouths and avoiding too much inbreathing. The spray races also have far less problems with poisoning and infections of animals than dips.

Back Pack Sprayer (Knapsack Sprayer)​

As most small scale farmers do not have access to dips or spray races, the best option becomes spraying by back pack sprayer. This is labour consuming and it is easy to miss areas on the animals (often under the tail, inside the ear or behind leg joints), where ticks can then hide and multiply. It is also important to avoid spraying directly into the animal's noses and open eyes. Animals can go blind from getting acaricides into their eyes, and can get poisoned by too much acaricide sprayed into their noses.

Pour-on​

Pour-on acaricides are slowly becoming more popular. These are formulated in a way that a certain amount is simply poured along the back of the animal, from where the acaricide distributes itself evenly over the whole hide of the animal. Pour-on's are very effective but still quite expensive.