**7. Essential healthcare services to attaining cost-effective health management of farm animals**

Prevention and control of pests and diseases of farm animals are essential to achieving profitable and sustainable farm animal production. This involves putting up all necessary actions to ensure that animals in stock are free of infections or debilitating effects of pests and diseases. Such actions are not only to save the animals but also give an added opportunity of eliminating or reducing the cost of treatment, which is usually expensive where animals were to be treated. However, an important step to preventing and controlling disease outbreak in farm animals by farmers is cognition of health communication behaviours of the farm animals, nature and virulence pathogenic organisms that may induce ailment, and signs that are disease-laden and symptoms of emerging diseases in the animals. Because of this, farmers may have to promptly and diligently take the following actions for good health management3 of farm animals and as well ensure profitable and sustainable livestock production.

**39**

**Figure 4.**

*A lamb with lame foot as result of infection. Source: Photo by author.*

*Farm Animals' Health Behaviours: An Essential Communicative Signal for Farmers' Veterinary…*

Effective care of farm animals begins with a vigil on the posture and environment of the animals. This entails regular checks on kept animals in stalls and fields and intermittent physical examination of the animals' bodies for early detection of impairment of their normal behaviours and any possible ill-health. Given this, farmers must be on the lookout for signs and conditions that may engender disease outbreak or infestation of pests in their animals. Hence, the understanding that a healthy animal will normally be on the stand on sighting their attendants and/or move excitedly when being approached to be fed makes it possible for a farmer to know that failure or refusal of an animal to stand up or move is a sign of impairment of the normal health of the animals and as such would need to be attended to, at least for examination and determination of what the health issue might be. Field experience in this regard with a livestock attendant 0n small ruminant farms shows that regular checks on the animals daily made it possible for quick detection of impairment of the animals' normal health condition. Observed cases of health issues in the stock as a result of regular checks on the animals include lameness (**Figure 4**) and refusal of one or two of the animals to move on being an approach. With these signs, cases of foot rot or scald, pneumonia, infestation by sheep fleas and worms in the animals. Physical examination of bodies of the animals for insects or pests is equally of great value in early detection of flies' infestation in ruminant skin and lice in poultry birds. Surveillance though begins with individual farmers and their farms, collective efforts become crucial to curtailing the spread of infectious diseases from farm to farm. Surveillance is about disease identification and reporting cases of infections by livestock keepers to animals' health agencies and veterinarians to enable disease patterns to be monitored [79]. On this note, the World Organisation of Animal Health—OIE, emphasises that effective surveillance system entails identification and/or observation of emerging disease and reporting such for sample and data collection, epidemiological and laboratory investigations, and management and communication of the resulting information to provide guidance on priorities and targets for the application of interventions to effectively

Hygiene practice is an important aspect of animals' health management and this entails keeping the farm environment free of any anything or condition that could induce pest infestation and disease infections in the animals. This includes

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89738*

**7.1 Surveillance**

control of the disease [80].

**7.2 Hygiene practice**

<sup>2</sup> Not all diseases in farm animals could be determined by physical examination. It may require clinical examination, immune system function, nociceptor response and behavioural assessment for accurate diagnosis of a particular disease which of course could not be done a farmer but by a veterinarian.

<sup>3</sup> This section and of course this chapter did not provide information on treatment, prevention, and control of specific diseases but on basic actions that could be taken in health management bused on animal attendants' cognition of the animals' vocalisation and the observed visual cue for health management of the animals.

*Farm Animals' Health Behaviours: An Essential Communicative Signal for Farmers' Veterinary… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89738*

## **7.1 Surveillance**

*Livestock Health and Farming*

to emerge or already discomforting the animals2

their animals for quick detection of laden diseases in their stock.

**management of farm animals**

**7. Essential healthcare services to attaining cost-effective health** 

Prevention and control of pests and diseases of farm animals are essential to achieving profitable and sustainable farm animal production. This involves putting up all necessary actions to ensure that animals in stock are free of infections or debilitating effects of pests and diseases. Such actions are not only to save the animals but also give an added opportunity of eliminating or reducing the cost of treatment, which is usually expensive where animals were to be treated. However, an important step to preventing and controlling disease outbreak in farm animals by farmers is cognition of health communication behaviours of the farm animals, nature and virulence pathogenic organisms that may induce ailment, and signs that are disease-laden and symptoms of emerging diseases in the animals. Because of this, farmers may have to promptly and diligently take the following actions for good health management3

farm animals and as well ensure profitable and sustainable livestock production.

<sup>2</sup> Not all diseases in farm animals could be determined by physical examination. It may require clinical examination, immune system function, nociceptor response and behavioural assessment for accurate diagnosis of a particular disease which of course could not be done a farmer but by a veterinarian. <sup>3</sup> This section and of course this chapter did not provide information on treatment, prevention, and control of specific diseases but on basic actions that could be taken in health management bused on animal attendants' cognition of the animals' vocalisation and the observed visual cue for health management of

Body movement of the animals is also essential cues to understanding the health communication behaviours of the animals. For instance, cattle will normally have their tails raised and positioned horizontally when defecating or urinating bur observation such positioning of tail aside the need for excretion is an indication of the health issue to be given attention. Also, kicking and tail swishing may be performed in response to acute pain with these signals directed toward the painful stimulus [49]. The ability of farmers to understand the communicative signals, however, depends on their good knowledge of different animal diseases and the signs that may be shown before the emergence of a particular disease. Based on experience, some farmers have developed the skills and intuition to rightly interpret behavioural signals of an animal about a specific kind of illness that is most likely

of goats' communicate their owner that their pen is heavily infested by lice was by their reluctance to enter the pen each day they return from free-range, and when forced into the pen, they began an unusual and constant stamping of their feet. But a curious examination of the sudden reluctance of entry into the pen revealed that the dusty floor of the pen was highly infested by lice which always walk into the goats' underneath hair thereby causing skin irritation to the animals. This was discovered when a multitude of lice flung onto the farmer's legs on entering pen thereby necessitating thorough cleaning of the pen and thereafter, no constant stamping of feet was observed among the goat. In essence, every behavioural actions farm animals might mean a lot and as such, livestock farmers need to understand and be able to distinguish between normal and abnormal behaviours of their farm animals to ensure good management of the animals' welfare. But farmers who do not have the experience or skill to accurately interpret the observed health communication behaviour of a farm animal would have to consult the service of a veterinarian. Thus farmers would have to consciously monitor the social actions of

. A field experience by which a set

of

**38**

the animals.

Effective care of farm animals begins with a vigil on the posture and environment of the animals. This entails regular checks on kept animals in stalls and fields and intermittent physical examination of the animals' bodies for early detection of impairment of their normal behaviours and any possible ill-health. Given this, farmers must be on the lookout for signs and conditions that may engender disease outbreak or infestation of pests in their animals. Hence, the understanding that a healthy animal will normally be on the stand on sighting their attendants and/or move excitedly when being approached to be fed makes it possible for a farmer to know that failure or refusal of an animal to stand up or move is a sign of impairment of the normal health of the animals and as such would need to be attended to, at least for examination and determination of what the health issue might be. Field experience in this regard with a livestock attendant 0n small ruminant farms shows that regular checks on the animals daily made it possible for quick detection of impairment of the animals' normal health condition. Observed cases of health issues in the stock as a result of regular checks on the animals include lameness (**Figure 4**) and refusal of one or two of the animals to move on being an approach. With these signs, cases of foot rot or scald, pneumonia, infestation by sheep fleas and worms in the animals. Physical examination of bodies of the animals for insects or pests is equally of great value in early detection of flies' infestation in ruminant skin and lice in poultry birds. Surveillance though begins with individual farmers and their farms, collective efforts become crucial to curtailing the spread of infectious diseases from farm to farm. Surveillance is about disease identification and reporting cases of infections by livestock keepers to animals' health agencies and veterinarians to enable disease patterns to be monitored [79]. On this note, the World Organisation of Animal Health—OIE, emphasises that effective surveillance system entails identification and/or observation of emerging disease and reporting such for sample and data collection, epidemiological and laboratory investigations, and management and communication of the resulting information to provide guidance on priorities and targets for the application of interventions to effectively control of the disease [80].
