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Animal Health

© Don De Beyer

One of the many challenges that a livestock farmer faces is keeping their animals healthy. Modern veterinary medicine is considerably different from 50 years ago and the ability to treat ailments of livestock has greatly improved. The use of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics has made the job of keeping animals healthy easier.

To understand, manage and treat animal diseases you first need to understand them. Etiology or the theory of how a disease is caused is very important. A disease can affect the whole body or only one/some of its parts. It may also have a know pathology and prognosis. For the farmer all of these factors become important in how the disease process is treated or managed.

Diseases can be broken into several basic causes:

Trauma Toxicity Immune disorders Inflammations Neoplasia Nutritional Metabolic Autoimmune Anomalies Degenerative

Infections are one of the most common causes of disease in livestock and listed below are several different types of infectious organisms.

Bacteria Virus Fungi Protozoa Rickettsia Helminths (i.e. worms) Arthropods (i.e. insect)

As you can see although most of use only think of bacteria and viruses there are in fact many different organisms that can cause infections. In other words, an infection is an attack of the body by a pathogenic or disease causing microorganism.

An animal has several ways in which it can challenge an infection. The first line of defence is a physical barrier such as the skin. The skin prevents many organisms access to our body systems. This is why cuts and scrapes present an increased risk of causing us infections. We are giving the microorganisms an easier route inside.

Another useful resistance mechanism is our ability to cough, sneeze etc. Some of the organisms that have entered can be expelled by these methods. The acidity in the stomach, ciliary action within our throats and the peristalsis of our gut also help to keep microorganisms in check.

The body does not rely solely on the above resistance mechanisms and while under attack will actively produce antibodies to fight the invasion. These cells specifically attack a given organism. The body identifies the organism as foreign and begins producing antibodies to fight it. This process can take several days or more before sufficient numbers of antibodies are present to eliminate the invasion.

Once the attack is over the body has the ability to remember the attacking organism and future incidents will result in a quicker antibiotic response. This is called active immunity caused by exposure to the disease. Vaccination is another method of active immunity but in that case, it was the artificial contact with the disease via vaccination that caused the immune response.