Animals too deserve kindness and protection
What you need to know:
- Farmers should also avoid treating their livestock with medicines without the prescription of a vet doctor.
- Overdoses of medicine can cause bad health for livestock or death.
All farmed animals and birds deserve kindness and protection. Like us humans, other living things particularly animals and birds have feelings.
They feel pain when beaten or hurt in any way. In many cases mistreatment of livestock results in financial loss to the farmer.
If for example a cow or goat is forced to pass too close to barbed wire it could get bruises or wounds on its skin.
If the wounds are not treated in good time the skin or hide of the animal will manifest scars and may not be as valuable as it would be without them.
It might take too long on medication and the farmer may not sell it if he has a financial emergency since veterinary doctors don’t recommend slaughtering animals undergoing medical treatment.
To benefit from livestock keeping it is not enough just to feed the animals and birds well. A lot of care is needed to keep them healthy.
This includes keeping a record of diseases that attack the livestock and when this happens in order to predict disease outbreaks and to know what steps to take.
The steps might involve talking to the area vet officer about vaccination of the livestock or elimination of parasites and other disease-causing microorganisms from the grazing area.
The parasites spread disease besides sucking blood from the livestock. Some of the parasites are eaten with food and get into the digestive system of the animals.
The parasites often result in stunted growth, thinning, low milk production, and death of the animal.
Wherever the animals graze the ground should be level and free of objects like nails, rope pieces and plastics. Swallowing of a nail or a sisal rope by an animal can cause death.
Animals falling into ditches may cause tissue ruptures, bone fractures, and joint sprains which can be exceedingly painful.
The farmer may get less milk from the suffering animal undergoing treatment. Such accidents can even cause miscarriages.
Farmers should also avoid treating their livestock with medicines without the prescription of a vet doctor.
Overdoses of medicine can cause bad health for livestock or death.
People transporting animals must exercise kindness by making sure the animals are in a comfortable position on the truck.
They should not get wounds or fractures on the trucks or lose parts of their bodies like tails and hoofs.
Mr Michael Ssali is a veteran journalist,
[email protected]
