Plant-Based Treatment of Helminths in Calves

Abstract

This study examines the indigenous plant practices for the treatment of helminths in cattle among settled agro-pastoralist in Ogun and Oyo State, Nigeria. The study was a pretest-posttest design. Three sets of helminth-infected cattle were each exposed to herbal treatment (Indigenous plant concoction (Group A, n=6), alverticine drug (convectional helminthic drug (Group B, n=6) orally for 1-14 days while the control group (Group C, n=6) were untreated. Faecal egg count was obtained using the Modified Mac Master and saturated salt solution technique and data were analyzed using ANOVA for repeated measures. The significant effect of treatment on FEC count across the four days of treatment (p < 0.05) as the FEC count significantly decline across from day 1 - 4 for both the herbal than the conventional treatment groups while the control group remains chronically infected with the helminths till 12th week. FEC count significantly decline faster for convectional drug group (FEC count cleared on 2nd day) compared to the herbal group (FEC count cleared on 4th day) (p < 0.05). Cows exposed to herbal drug significantly (90.36±4.780) had better weight gain than those exposed to conventional treatment (85.65±7.405) while there was significant weight loss observed in the control group (76.68 ±6.435) at the 12th week. The study concludes that herbal concoctions based traditional knowledge of medicinal plants were efficacious in the treatment of helminths infestation. It is therefore recommended that regular control measure should be practiced and agro-pastoralist needed to be educated in proper usage of anti-helminths drugs and its administration.