Information and Communication tools to address the Animal Health Related issues during Nationwide Lockdown Period

The present article narrates the efforts put forth and services extended by the veterinarians and scientists of ICAR-Central Institute for Research on Cattle, Meerut Cantt. Uttar Pradesh during the nationwide lockdown period amid COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been almost a year when the animal husbandry has suffered enormous economic losses during the nationwide lockdown period due to COVID-19 pandemic. On the basis of a telephonic survey of 40 dairy farmers, it was observed that they were beset by several problems which were adversely affecting their economy and livelihood, these are; rocket hike in the cost of readymade feed and feed ingredients, delayed or non-availability of concentrate feeds, poor disposal of surplus milk and drastic (25-40%) reduction in sale price of milk, less availability of veterinary and first aid health services through paravets at the farmers’ doorstep. Moreover, milk consumption in India was also declined by 25 per cent previous year because of the closure of hotels, restaurants and roadside tea stalls amid nationwide lock down to contain the spread of COVID-19 (Media reports; Business standard, March 31, 2020).

Keeping in mind the COVID pandemic, our team of scientists thought that we should not let our animal as well as stakeholder suffering. Therefore, in an attempt to provide best possible assistance to dairy stakeholders, different types of information and communication tools were used to address the issues of dairy farmers in the form of daily advisories and treatment of specific diseases of dairy animals through social media, newspaper, video calls, voice calls, WhatsApp groups and SMS.

In the beginning total 40 registered farmers belonging to nearby villages were interviewed telephonically to assess the nature of hardship to cattle owners due to situation arisen due to lockdown in the month of March and April, 2020. Thereafter, we created total 9 WhatsApp groups namely “CIRC Gaudhanvani (001 to 009)” in which 1930 farmers belonging to different states were added and daily advisories (in Hindi) pertaining to animal Nutrition, Health, Reproduction and Management were prepared by different veterinary and animal scientists and posted in all the WhatsApp groups. Same advisories were also posted on the social media platforms like ‘Facebook’ so that multiple numbers of farmers can be benefitted. Besides, specific queries of farmers were also addressed by personalized voice calls, WhatsApp audio and video calls.

Details of farmers’ queries addressed and advisories released during the lockdown period are as below:

• Advisories pertaining to Animal Nutrition included feeding of new born and growing calves, nutritional requirements and feeding of pregnant, lactating and dry cows, formulation of balanced feed and concentrate mixture.
• Animal health related issues and advisories were focused on management of mastitis, Foot and mouth disease, Indigestion, endo- as well as ectoparasites, Anorexia, Tympany, Diarrhoea and hypocalcaemia and vaccination schedule of dairy animals.
• Management of Anestrus, Repeat breeding, Genital prolapse, Retained fetal membranes, proper timing of AI in dairy cows were the major issues related to animal reproduction.
• Importance of colostrum, management of heat stress, record keeping in livestock rearing, disinfection and sanitary measures at dairy farm were the advisories related to Livestock management.

A total 2066 farmers, paravets and dairy entrepreneurs were benefitted by ways of addressing queries of 136 farmers and advisories released to 1930 farmers during the study period and more than 50 appreciations were received after resolving the problems. The farmers were also advised to follow ITKs (Indigenous technical knowledge) for the management of problems related to dairy animals.

It was thus observed that the livestock health and management was affected to a greater extent due to sudden lockdown. Under these conditions use of ICTs played a significant role to address the issues related to various aspects of animal rearing, which provided a great relief to the dairy farmers and also rendered some satisfaction to the veterinary fraternity. At the end, we must think of conducting these kinds of activities on a larger scale in different local languages so that more number of farmers from every corner of the country can be benefitted under any kind of such emergency situations.