Animal Health and Disease Quiz

Respiratory Diseases of Farm Animals

• Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP): affects cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs, causing fever, rough hair coat, salivation, foaming, difficulty feeding, weakness, lameness, and death

Infectious Diseases

• Brucellosis: infectious bacterial disease causing abortion and infertility
• Anthrax: infects ruminant animals and humans
• Newcastle disease (NCD): viral disease of poultry

Parasites of Farm Animals

• Over 1,000 species of parasites affect domestic animals
• Internal parasites (Endoparasites): interfere with digestion and assimilation of food, leading to diarrhea, anemia, and loss of condition
• External parasites (Ectoparasites): annoy hosts by biting, embedding, or irritating the skin, causing diseases like mange and scabies, and transmitting diseases like red water and trypanosomiasis

Effects of Diseases and Parasites on Animal Production

• Diseases and parasites are significant constraints in animal production, resulting in financial loss for farmers
• Sick animals lead to loss of productivity and mortality, reduced product sales, and high costs of control, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment
• Disease and parasite outbreaks affect food and job security, resulting in economic loss to farmers and the nation
• Public health concerns arise as some animal diseases are transmittable to humans, such as brucellosis, anthrax, salmonellosis, and taeniasis

Prevention and Control of Common Farm Animal Diseases

• Proper hygiene or sanitation: washing feed and water troughs, separating sick animals from healthy ones, and burning or burying dead animals
• Good management: providing essential nutrients to animals to resist disease and parasite attacks
• Quarantine and isolation: purchasing healthy-looking animals from reputable farms and isolating new animals for two weeks
• Medicine: timely vaccination against diseases and quarantining diseased animals
• Spraying or dipping: controlling external parasites like flies, lice, mites, and ticks with chemical solutions

Health and Disease

• Health is the state of wellbeing of an animal, and any deviation from this state is termed disease
• A healthy animal can achieve acceptable production levels within the farming system
• Animal diseases can lead to loss of appetite, weight loss, slow growth, reduced production, reproduction loss, and death

Routes of Transmission of Pathogens

• Pathogens are disease-causing microorganisms that can be infected through direct contact, ingestion, mating or pre-birth, inhalation, or vectors

Symptoms of Sick Animals

• Loss of appetite, weight loss, coughing, slow movement, lameness, and isolation
• Discharges from body openings, sunken eyes, raised hair coat, rough skin, dry muzzle, swelling in joints, variation in body temperature, pulse rate, and respiration rate