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Obert Chifamba Agri-Insight

IT is fast becoming that cyclical nightmare, which every cattle farmer wants to quickly jerk out of and never drift back into again.

That is January disease or Theileriosis.

In recent years the country has made significant strides in the fight to contain the disease after nearly a million cattle deaths, severely denting the national herd re-stocking efforts.

Government has since responded by introducing a raft of measures towards the containment of the problem.

Sadly, each time we think we are making progress, fresh cases erupt and for a moment, the disease appears to be going wild again.

This is happening every year at the beginning of the rainy season. Maybe farmers are quickly getting into the comfort zone as soon as cases appear to be ebbing.

The disease has caused huge economic losses after killing hundreds of thousands of cattle, particularly from 2017 to date.

Of course there have been signs of lulling in cases from 2021 to the present with Government support, through Treasury, making it possible for the country to bring down cases and deaths, year-on-year by 47 and 31 percent in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

I guess this was the point at which most farmers thought they were home and dry and loosened their grip on the gains that had been made towards eradicating the problem.

Sporadic outbreaks of the disease have therefore not been uncommon from that period to the present but Government has not lost focus and duly announced war on January disease last year.

It has rolled out several initiatives to consolidate the progress that has been made and introduced the 5-5-4 dipping regime during the rainy season to ensure the pest was defeated.

The Presidential Tick Grease Programme further strengthened the Government’s charge while the resumption of the Bolvac vaccine manufacturing added more venom to the fight.

Recent reports of cattle deaths due to the disease are once again worrisome amid indications that something is definitely compromising the concerted efforts from Government and other stakeholders.

Essentially, the buck stops with the farmer because he is the one on the ground monitoring and making sure the progress recorded towards securing the welfare of his cattle at any given point is maintained.

In the reports, the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) revealed that 618 January disease-inspired cattle deaths had been recorded countrywide from December 2023 to January 2024 with chief director Dr Pious Makaya once again challenging farmers to religiously follow their dipping rota and stick to the 5-5-4 regime throughout the rainy season.

From the figures revealed by Dr Makaya, the highest number of cases were reported in Mashonaland East with 177, Mashonaland West with 118 with Masvingo third on 94, Matabeleland South with 91, Mashonaland Central on 49, Midlands 43, Manicaland 33 and Matabeleland North on 13. This shows that the country has recorded some breakthrough in the fight to contain ticks, thanks to the integrated tick-borne disease control strategy that is currently being used.

Maybe it may require the DVS to revise the way it is enforcing compliance to dipping of cattle by farmers.

If it means raising the penalties for failure to dip cattle so be it because this may be a case of just a few farmers failing to dip their cattle effectively and giving ticks another chance to re-group.

The current penalty for not dipping cattle according to Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary, Professor Obert Jiri may be a fine of US$50 per beast not dipped or failure to access bank loans by the errant farmer.

And given the fact that the disease is common between December and March although of late it has come to occur all year-round despite peaking in January, this means that farmers should now treat every time of the year in the same manner in which they treat the month of January during which it peaks.

It is now a fact that the brown ear tick is remaining active throughout the year hence the need to adopt a militant approach towards it every minute.

It is time farmers also adopt other tick containment measures other than plunge dipping and use them to complement the former.

The refreshing news at the moment is that Government is pushing to broaden the manufacturing of the vaccines to control the disease and ensure every farmer has access to them.

At the moment, DVS’ target is to produce 400 000 doses of Theileriosis/January vaccines, 80 000 for Red water (Babesiosis) and another 80 000 for Anaplasmosis (Gall sickness).

The department is also expecting to produce 25 million doses of Newcastle this year compared to 15 million produced last season.

DVS deputy director Diagnostics and Research, Dr Chenai Majuru has also confirmed that the department will be targeting to scale up production of the tick borne disease vaccines to boost the fight against pests that usually manifest in numbers during the rainy season.

Dr Majuru further revealed that they were working on modalities to produce anthrax vaccines saying a technical team was already on the ground training the experts tasked with producing the vaccines.

This means that the problem of anthrax will also be significantly reduced, which makes cattle farming safer than it currently is.

But whatever happens, farmers must always remember that dipping is a critical component of protecting livestock from tick-borne diseases with vaccination programmes and tick grease application coming in as complementary measures. The process of dipping helps to break the tick cycle.

Besides maintaining a strict dipping schedule, farmers also need to be alive to the fact that ticks are also spread through moving cattle from one area to another without authority from DVS.

They need permits to move. It is also crucial to vaccinate their livestock against vector-borne and soil-borne diseases to prevent major outbreaks during the rainy season and the vaccines must be bought from reputable sources and not random traders.

At this point it may also make sense for DVS to come up with a vaccination calendar to remind farmers on the times they need to be vaccinating their cattle against these persistent diseases.

Some awareness programmes regularly may also not be a bad idea given that every year the country is losing many cattle to the same disease or diseases.

Farmers on the other hand must now act like business people and have the courage to sell one or two heads of cattle to secure vaccines or dipping chemicals to save the bigger herd. It is unfortunate that some farmers still keep cattle for sentimental value and just brag about the size of their herds yet do nothing to maintain and keep them growing.

January disease is a notifiable disease in Zimbabwe and if a farmer suspects it on his farm, he is compelled by law to report it to DVS. Statistics show that more than 65 percent of cattle deaths in Zimbabwe are caused by tick-borne diseases, which include a January Disease, Red Water, Heart Water and Gall Sickness.

It is therefore important for farmers to remember that dipping of cattle is mandatory by law and should be done at least once a week to control ticks and tick-borne diseases during the rainy season.