Management of animal health

• Proper selection of suitable animal breeds: The breed of the animal is the starting point in successful organic animal health management. Only breeds adapted to local conditions in terms of feed requirements, weather, common parasites and disease tolerance should be chosen. This will minimise the cost of management as well as the risk of losses due to deaths.
• Quarantine measures:Any new animals introduced in the farm should first be well treated and isolated for a while to allow for closer monitoring of their health status. Movement of any materials including manure, and equipment should be restricted from areas and farms unless the healthy status of such farms is ascertained to be safe. Visitors to the farm should also sanitise their feet before moving into the animal houses or grazing areas to minimise transfer of infections.
• Regular monitoring of animals: Close observation of animals is important to identify and treat infections before they worsen or infect other animals. Thus organic farmers keep daily or frequent records to assist in assessing possible signs and causes of the diseases or injuries. Signs of illness may include reduced appetite resulting in reduced feed and water intake, reduced productivity or, for example, a drop in milk or egg production, apathy observable as a lack of vitality, head down or abnormal movement, abnormal discharge from bodily orifices, difficulty in breathing observable as fast, laboured, coughing, and gasping, inflammation of mucus membranes in the mouth, conjunctiva, and vulva lips, where the membrane may be pale or dry in cattle, rise or drop in body temperature, excreta material may become different from normal, either too hard, too watery or may be covered with mucus or blood. Heavily infested animals can be separated from others or, as a final measure be slaughtered so that they do not infect others. The meat should only be eaten if the animal’s body temperature is normal and there is no abnormality in the meat, otherwise it should be buried away.
• Vaccination: Vaccination is recommended especially for diseases that are difficult or impossible to cure and which cause great losses by causing high mortality rates. Examples of such diseases include foot and mouth disease, anthrax, pneumonia, African swine fever and avian influenza. For certification, organic standards classify the use of vaccines as restricted. This means that their routine use is discouraged and is only permitted when it can be demonstrated by the organic farmer that a specific disease is endemic in the region or on the organic farm, or where their use is required by law or if a veterinarian recommends it. Organic certifiers will, therefore, require written verification from a veterinarian to confirm the presence or threat of disease infection. In addition, the vaccines must not contain genetically modified ingredients or by-products. The use of vaccines under these circumstances will not prejudice certification and does not require quarantine procedures, but full records of treatments must be kept.

Organic management of animals also focuses on providing appropriate and favourable growing conditions to enhance the animal’s natural immunity and resistance to infections. These include provision of balanced animal feed, appropriate housing and animal-friendly handling practises.

Although animals have varying degrees of natural ability to resist or withstand infections, farmers can enhance this ability. Young animals derive this ability by suckling of colostrum, especially within the first 6 hours of birth as it contains antibodies. Routine and preventive application of antibiotics is not recommended for organic animals as it interferes with the animal’s ability to develop natural resistance to infections. The disease pathogens, in the long run, tend to develop resistance to these drugs.

• Proper nutrition: The feeding of animals should ensure balanced diets and right proportions, high quality and fresh forage, low levels of concentrates for ruminants and mineral supplementation to avoid deficiencies. Potentially poisonous feeds like thorn apple weed (Datura stramonium), mouldy feed or use of poultry droppings, dung or other manures as feed, should be avoided. Grazing pastures should also be managed well with adequate rotations to avoid build up of pasture borne internal parasites such as gastrointestinal nematodes.
• Ensuring proper housing and sanitation: Regular cleaning of the animal housing units, feeding and watering troughs and the surrounding environment helps reduce health risks. All animal manure should be regularly composted while all the non-compostable material has to be properly collected and incinerated or disposed of to avoid creating potential sources of injury to the animals.
• Avoiding stressful conditions: Organic farmers aim to minimise physical and psychological stress in animals in order to promote well-being and normal growth. Stressful conditions weaken the bodies of animals rendering them susceptible to infections. They also sometimes inflict direct injury to their organs. Stress can also be caused by weather conditions such as excessive heat, sunlight, rain, wind or confinement such that the animals cannot meet their behavioural needs like walking, running, flying or resting. Harsh handling of animals includes physical beating, inflexible tethering and deprivation of sufficient access to food and water are other conditions that can cause stress. Gentle handling leads to tame, calm and healthy animals.

While organic animal management emphasizes good care and preventive practises as the preferred method of maintaining livestock health, it also recognizes that sometimes these measures may be insufficient to protect against disease and illness. In such cases, treatment with chemical drugs and antibiotics may be applied. However, when such treatments are administered, appropriate withdraw measures should be followed, especially for certified organic animal husbandry. The use of such treatments does not result in the loss of certification status, but does require the treated animals to be withheld from sale or killing for a period two times the legal withholding period for the substance in question. Also products of such treated animals may not be sold as organic for a certain time.

On the other hand, there are natural herbal remedies and traditional treatments used in animal treatments. These remedies are easily available and cheap. They include:

• Dietary additives like vitamins and minerals.
• Botanical dewormers such as garlic, pumpkin seed and worm wood (Artemisia spp.) that can be added in animal feed to manage gastrointestinal nematodes, and lung and liver parasites.
• Neem seed oil, tephrosia or pyrethrum to control ticks.

However, farmers need to consider that when the organic treatment is not effective, conventional treatment must be applied to ensure the welfare of the animal.

Ticks can be one-, two-, or three-host feeders. In one-host species, all stages live and moult on the same host, then eggs are laid on the ground. In two-host species, larvae and nymphs share the same host, but the adult stage reproduces on a separate host. In three-host species, all three stages target different hosts; eggs are laid on the ground. The majority of ticks are 3-host feeders and the hosts may or may not be of the same species. The sheep tick (Ixodes ricinus) usually feeds once per stage, on different hosts from a wide range of species during its life cycle. This makes it one of the most common ticks to infect livestock, domestic pets and human beings. Other host species include: mice, rats, squirrels, reptiles, cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats and humans.

The life cycle of ticks involves 4 stages; egg, larva, nymph and adult. When the eggs hatch, the larva seeks a host, feeds and then drops off to moult to the nymphal stage. The nymph then seeks another host, feeds, drops off and moults to the adult stage. The adults (male and female) seek another host, feed, drop, mate and then lay eggs on the ground. Ticks are different depending on how long this cycle takes and the number of hosts involved in the cycle.

Gastro Intestinal Nematodes (GIN): These are worm parasites of the small intestine and the abomasum of ruminants. They have a life cycle without an intermediate host. Worm eggs are excreted with the faeces of the hosts. Within the faeces, a first larvae (L1) hatches from the eggs and develops to the infectious third larvae stage (L3), which leaves the faeces and migrates to the pasture. Infection takes place when animals take up L3 larvae while feeding. Recommendations for prevention: L3 Larvae of GIN are dependent on wet grass or at least dew to migrate on the grass that is eaten by animals. Therefore, one possibility to avoid infection is to graze animals only on dry pastures.