| dc.description.abstract | This study was carried out between April 2020 and July 2020 to determine the presence of ticks on cattle and examine the methods and practices of acaricide application to cattle in Buwama sub-county.
Semi-structured questionnaires were administered to forty (40) randomly selected cattle farmers from five selected parishes of Buwama sub-county. These were used to collect data about the occurrence of ticks on cattle and acaricide application methods and practices. In addition, observations were made for tick counts to determine mean number of ticks per head of cattle. Grossly different ticks were identified to genus level using morphological characteristics.
Ticks were present in 50% of the cattle farms with a mean number of 10.9±13.898 ticks. The minimum number was 2 while the maximum was 50 ticks per animal. Ticks were more frequent on adult cattle with 80% of adult cattle infested while none of the heifers had ticks. In addition, ticks were more common on local than cross and exotic breeds. Rhipicephalus was the commonest genus observed from all (100%) the farms and other genera observed includes Amblyomma (30%) and Boophilus (10%). Hand spraying was the only method used to apply acaricides on cattle and knapsack sprayers were the most common equipment used by 90% of the farmers. Among the acaricides, organophosphates were used by 65% of the farmers while none used macrocyclic lactones. However, 15% did not know the type of acaricide they used. Factors such as frequency of acaricide application, who applies the acaricide, body area where much attention is payed had a significant relationship with presence of ticks on cattle (p<0.005). Ticks were therefore prevalent in study area and could lead to a high occurrence of tick borne diseases therefore appropriate tick control methods should be in place and further research on the same topic should be conducted at district level. | en_US |
