Livestock Day at Safari GVE

One of the many pleasures we get to experience in South Africa on our program is a wide range of species to help. We not only do community dogs and cats and the safari wildlife, we also get hands on experience with livestock animals.

Foot rot or also known as infectious pododermatitis, is a hoof infection commonly found in sheep, goats, and cattle. It is a necrotic infection that can cause swelling and lameness. In cattle, the bacterias that causes footnote is called Fusobacterium necophorum or Bacteroides melaninogenicus these are both anaerobic bacteria, meaning they thrive in places of no oxygen.

Simple. some injury must have happened either from barbwire, muddy conditions or rough ground. Any thing that can weaken the skin and cause bacteria to come in through a small wound and infect the area. A way to treat it is to first identify the problem, on why is it lame. If it is foot rot, then a course of antibiotics and rest/recovery should be enough to treat the problem.

Dehorning cattle can seem like it puts harm to these animals. We would use a local anesthetic block to block pain to the animal. Dehorning is important because it helps prevent injury to the animal and the people handling them. Often times a horn can break by impact while an animal accidentally bumps into it or if there is aggression toward another animal. This can cause intense pain and can get infected. So we do our best to minimize injury and improve the welfare of these animals.

Many injections we give to cattle may include endoparasites (internal parasites), ectoparasites (external parasites like lice or ticks). There are also vaccines we can give to prevent IBR- Infectious Bovine Rhinitis, BVD- Bovine Viral Diarrhea, PI3- Parainfluenza 3, and Blue tongue. Another injection we can give is antibiotics, many antibiotics that we use last a long time because a vet is often scarce to find to do routine care often.