Foot-and-mouth disease
It is a rapidly spreading viral disease that infects cloven-hoofed animals such as cows, sheep, goats and pigs. It also infects wild animals such as deer, and can infect hoofed animals such as camels and elephants. Horses are immune to this disease.
There are about seven different immune strains of the virus that causes the disease, and each strain infects one or several different species of animals. The severity of the symptoms of the disease varies depending on the type of viral strain that causes it.
Causes of the spread of the disease:
- Sick animals, as the virus is found in milk, urine, feces and oral secretions.
- Feed contaminated with the virus.
- Through contaminated food and water.
- Inhalation, as it can be transmitted by dust particles in the air in endemic areas.
- Through the eyes by contact.
- The feet of contaminated animals that they put in mud.
Symptoms of the disease:
The virus forms an initial water bubble within 24 to 48 hours at the site of entry into the body.
- After that, the temperature of the infected animal rises for a period ranging between 24 and 36 hours, and during this period the animal is highly contagious, as the virus is secreted in saliva, milk and feces.
- Then the lips of the infected animal swell and saliva flows heavily from the mouth of infected animals to reach the ground in the form of long silver lines.
- Then the bubbles spread in the mouth, pharynx and gums, and usually burst and leave painful, inflamed ulcers, to the point that they prevent the animal from eating fodder and cause loss of appetite.
- The same bubbles also appear on the feet, which ulcerate and become inflamed, and vesicles appear between the hooves, which causes animals infected with this disease to have difficulty walking and moving and causes lameness in the legs.
Treatment of foot-and-mouth disease:
- Immunization is the preventive way to prevent the appearance of this disease, as immunity is acquired from immunity to the disease.
- Injections with antipyretics.
- Rinse the mouth with 1% alum solution or 5% boric acid and apply boric ointment with potassium chlorate in a ratio of 10:1 to treat ulcers, or wash the mouth with 5% vinegar water three times a day.
- Apply 1:1 ichthyol with glycerin to the udder or zinc ointment.
- Clean and disinfect foot ulcers with 10% copper sulphate solution several times a day, then apply tar or oil.
- Give soft, easily digestible fodder.
- Treatment for this disease depends on preventing secondary infection, as the animal is given antibiotics and topical treatment is continued according to the location of the lesion.
- Wash the hooves with soap and water, then with cronesin solution, then smear them with zinc oxide ointment and creolin with copper sulphate, wrap the hooves with a bandage and smear them with tar.
- Wash the udder with lukewarm water and soap, then with 4% boric acid.
- Isolate infected cases in a remote place and prevent them from mixing with animals susceptible to infection, and prevent the individuals responsible for their care from moving to the pens of healthy animals.
- Cut the dirt floors and dispose of the fodder and waste of infected animals by disinfection, burning and burying.
