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Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda

BACKGROUND: Endometritis is a prevalent uterine disease in postpartum cows. The disease reduces fertility performance and milk yield, and subsequently, productivity and profitability of dairy farms. The reduction in performance is associated with considerable economic losses on dairy farms. Smallhol...

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Autores principales: Nyabinwa, Pascal, Kashongwe, Olivier Basole, Hirwa, Claire d’Andre, Bebe, Bockline Omedo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7275537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32503530
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12917-020-02368-6
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author Nyabinwa, Pascal
Kashongwe, Olivier Basole
Hirwa, Claire d’Andre
Bebe, Bockline Omedo
author_facet Nyabinwa, Pascal
Kashongwe, Olivier Basole
Hirwa, Claire d’Andre
Bebe, Bockline Omedo
author_sort Nyabinwa, Pascal
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Endometritis is a prevalent uterine disease in postpartum cows. The disease reduces fertility performance and milk yield, and subsequently, productivity and profitability of dairy farms. The reduction in performance is associated with considerable economic losses on dairy farms. Smallholder farmers are likely to incur considerable economic losses from the disease where they lack knowledge of effective prevention and control measures for the disease. This study used farmer’s perspectives to determine the effectiveness of different management interventions (MIs) for endometritis prevention and control on smallholder farms in Rwanda practicing dairy zero-grazing. The best-worst scaling (BWS) choice method was applied that relied on past 1 year recall data obtained from 154 farmers. These farmers were identified through snowball sampling in a cross-sectional study. RESULTS: Of the 20 MIs evaluated, 12 scored highly for effectiveness. The top four most effective are: avoiding sharing equipment with neighbouring farms (45.5%), consulting animal health service provider about disease treatment (31.8%), keeping cows in a clean and dry shed (26.7%), and selecting sires based on calving ease (26.6%). The MIs considered least effective were: maintaining clean transition cow housing (35.1%), removal of fetal membrane immediately after passing (33.1%), disinfecting the equipment used in calving assistance before and after use (32.5%), and selecting sires with low percent stillbirths (29.2%). CONCLUSION: This study has demonstrated the application of BWS object case method in understanding the MIs that farmers consider are most effective in the prevention and control of endometritis disease in the dairy herds. The MIs are on-farm biosecurity and hygiene, seeking veterinary services for disease treatment and selecting sires for ease of calving. These MIs should be considered for prioritization in extension services and research to continuously improve and enhance their practical application on smallholder dairy farms.
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spelling pubmed-72755372020-06-08 Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda Nyabinwa, Pascal Kashongwe, Olivier Basole Hirwa, Claire d’Andre Bebe, Bockline Omedo BMC Vet Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Endometritis is a prevalent uterine disease in postpartum cows. The disease reduces fertility performance and milk yield, and subsequently, productivity and profitability of dairy farms. The reduction in performance is associated with considerable economic losses on dairy farms. Smallholder farmers are likely to incur considerable economic losses from the disease where they lack knowledge of effective prevention and control measures for the disease. This study used farmer’s perspectives to determine the effectiveness of different management interventions (MIs) for endometritis prevention and control on smallholder farms in Rwanda practicing dairy zero-grazing. The best-worst scaling (BWS) choice method was applied that relied on past 1 year recall data obtained from 154 farmers. These farmers were identified through snowball sampling in a cross-sectional study. RESULTS: Of the 20 MIs evaluated, 12 scored highly for effectiveness. The top four most effective are: avoiding sharing equipment with neighbouring farms (45.5%), consulting animal health service provider about disease treatment (31.8%), keeping cows in a clean and dry shed (26.7%), and selecting sires based on calving ease (26.6%). The MIs considered least effective were: maintaining clean transition cow housing (35.1%), removal of fetal membrane immediately after passing (33.1%), disinfecting the equipment used in calving assistance before and after use (32.5%), and selecting sires with low percent stillbirths (29.2%). CONCLUSION: This study has demonstrated the application of BWS object case method in understanding the MIs that farmers consider are most effective in the prevention and control of endometritis disease in the dairy herds. The MIs are on-farm biosecurity and hygiene, seeking veterinary services for disease treatment and selecting sires for ease of calving. These MIs should be considered for prioritization in extension services and research to continuously improve and enhance their practical application on smallholder dairy farms. BioMed Central 2020-06-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7275537/ /pubmed/32503530 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12917-020-02368-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Nyabinwa, Pascal
Kashongwe, Olivier Basole
Hirwa, Claire d’Andre
Bebe, Bockline Omedo
Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda
title Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda
title_full Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda
title_fullStr Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda
title_full_unstemmed Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda
title_short Perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in Rwanda
title_sort perception of farmers about endometritis prevention and control measures for zero-grazed dairy cows on smallholder farms in rwanda
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7275537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32503530
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12917-020-02368-6
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