Study on Ethno Veterinary Practices in Amaro Special District Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

IntroductionEthiopia has the huge livestock population in Africa and owns about 41.5 million heads of cattle, 28.2 million sheep and goats, 5.8 million equine, 1 million camels and over 42 million poultry [1]. The livestock production is a major asset among resource-poor smallholder farmers by providing milk, meat, skin, manure and traction. However, their economic benefits remain low due to prevailing diseases which are among the principal bottle necks of livestock performance and cause of high economic losses of the resource poor farmers [2,3]. The majority of livestock raisers in Ethiopia are far away from the sites of animal clinic stations. The inadequate funding at the national level for the prevention and control of animal diseases adds to the burden, especially among pastoralists who live in the remote arid and semi-arid lowland parts of the country [4]. Modern veterinary medicines are not well developed in the country, and the modern drugs availability is not adequately to fight animal diseases. It is estimated that the traditional remedies are sometimes the only source of therapeutics for nearly 90% of livestock in Ethiopia of which 95% are plant origin [5,6]. Ethiopian farmers and pastoralists rely on traditional knowledge, practices and plants, to control livestock diseases [6][7][8][9] and Ethiopians have used traditional medicines for many centuries, due to cultural acceptability, efficacy against certain diseases and economic affordability [10,11]. The indigenous people of different localities in the country have developed their own specific knowledge of plant resource uses, management and conservation [12,13].The application of traditional medicines to veterinary medicine has been termed as ethno veterinary medicine. Ethno veterinary medicine has been defined as an indigenous animal healthcare system that includes the traditional beliefs, knowledge, skills, methods and practices of a given society, [14,15]. The knowledge varies from region to region and from community to community [16]. In general, ethno veterinary practices have been developed by trial and error and by actual experimentation [17]. Ethno veterinary medicine comprises of traditional surgical techniques, traditional immunization, magicoreligious practices, and the use of herbal medicines to treat livestock diseases [6,11].The ethno veterinary medicinal plant knowledge, similar to other Abstract Background: Ethno veterinary knowledge covers up people's knowledge, skills, methods, practices and beliefs about the care of their animals and themselves, and has been used over many centuries.

Plant Diversity and Ethnoveterinary Practices of Ethiopia: A Systematic Review

“…The second and third majorly used plant parts both in integrated (21.94%; 6.53%) and pastoral (23.81%; 7.66%) LPS were root and seeds/fruit, respectively. The finding of this systematic review is in line with [13, 16].…”

“…This might be due to the fact that prevalence rate of dermal and respiratory ailments in pastoral LPS is higher than other livestock ailments. The result of this systematic review is in line with [13–16, 18, 30].…”

“…The result of this systematic review is supported by [14, 16, 30]. Other studies [13, 16, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27] report that the frequently utilized plant families and species are in contrast to the finding of this systematic review. Agroecological factors can determine the type and abundance of EVM plants that can grow in an area [5].…”

“…This might be due to the fact that availability of different EVM plants in integrated LPS could let healers/respondents depend on various EVM plants rather than specific EVM plant. This result is supported by the works [9, 12, 13, 16, 20, 22, 34] which indicates different DCF value of livestock ailment from the selected documents reveal that less than six plants are specifically used to treat specific livestock ailment from integrated LPS. The majorly treated livestock ailments of this study were supported by number of documents [19, 20, 29, 34].…”

Medicinal ethnoveterinary plants used for treating livestock ailments in the omo-gibe and rift valley basins of Ethiopia

“…Although different plant parts have been used to treat various illnesses, leaves and seeds were the two plant parts most frequently used in the study district. This result is consistent with research conducted by Tekle [ 49 ] in the southern Ethiopian Amaro special district, the western Ethiopia Horro Gudurru district [ 18 ], and the eastern Harerghe Melkabello district [ 41 ]. It disagrees, however, with studies done by Jima and Megersa [ 50 ] in the Berbere District of Oromia region and by Seid [ 44 ] in the Amhara region's Enarj Enawega District's east Gojjam Zone [ 8 ].…”