Drugs for Livestock Disease Prevention & Treatment

Drugs for Livestock Care
Drugs are allowed in organic farming as per veterinary recommendations but alternative medicine is preferred. Preventive use of drugs is forbidden and antibiotics can be used a limited times, with a double withdrawal time. Animal health care is still not sufficiently developed that we can keep livestock healthy without veterinary drugs

Vaccines​

In order to keep livestock healthy it is very important to observe strict adherence to recommended vaccination schedules recommended by your veterinarian, who should be familiar with the kind of diseases occurring in your area.

Vaccines are active or inactivated disease organisms used to boost immunity of the livestock from specific diseases. They have played a major role in eradicating some of the most dangerous diseases both in man and livestock such as smallpox in man and rinderpest in animals. Application of vaccines is a cheap way of protecting your whole flock against devastating diseases, such as Newcaste disease, which cannot be treated and can kill all the chicken in an entire village. Another example of a deadly disease which can kill all your goats and half of your sheep is Goat Plague or Pest of small ruminants (PPR); there is no treatment against PPR but it can be prevented by vaccination. Keeping up to date on which vaccinations are important for success of livestock in your area is a very important management tool.

Vaccines need to be kept constantly chilled in a fridge or frozen (depending on manufacturers instructions), as they deteriorate rapidly and loose efficacy within hours when exposed to warm temperature. New, so called 'thermostable', vaccines are becoming available, which are more resistant to warm temperatures and can be kept for days (sometimes weeks) without cooling or freezing. Once a vaccine vial has been opened the whole contents should be used quickly. Unused vaccine remaining in the open vial cannot be kept for later use. It is advisable for several farmers to team up and have their animals vaccinated together on the same day. In this way they will share the costs for buying the vaccine, make full use of the vaccine vial contents and the vaccination becomes cheaper.

In Kenya vaccines are available from KEVEVAPI, or a well stocked local veterinary shop equipped with a fridge. Vaccines should be handled and administered by trained veterinary personnel. Most often you will have to rely on the local veterinarian for vaccinating your animals. Chicken vaccination by eye-drop against Newcastle disease can be administered by trained farmers. Click here for more specific information on Vaccination


Basic medicines to keep in stock

As Kenya and East Africa in general has a very low population of trained veterinarians, farmers need to learn to deal with emergencies that happen when the vet is not around. Most environments in Africa have a high disease challenge, and the serious farmer need to learn how to deal with this in order to have healthy, happy and productive animals. Below is a list of some of the most useful medicines to keep in the store and use in such emergencies: