Learn - World Ark

Natural Remedies - Living Medicine for Livestock

By Lauren Wilcox, Freelance Writer

Near Bamenda, Cameroon—
The garden tended by Boboh Sunjong and Nyongo Andre on a jungly hillside in Cameroon looks, to the casual observer, much the same as the tangle of undergrowth that surrounds it. But each plant and flower in this garden has been carefully cultivated for a reason: The garden is actually a living pharmacy that the neighboring community uses to treat its livestock. And Sunjong and Nyongo, as they lead visitors from shrub to shrub, can identify each plant by name.

The two men are participating in a project, supported by Heifer International, whose goal is to help standardize and share the wealth of knowledge that many small livestock farmers have about the medicinal properties and uses of indigenous plants.

Ethnoveterinary medicine, as the science is known, has long been used by small farmers around the world, primarily in rural areas where veterinary services and manufactured medicines were not available or were prohibitively expensive.

Now, with Heifer’s help, farmers in Cameroon, Guatemala, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Nepal and other places around the globe have been meeting, exchanging seeds and treatments, and learning techniques for preservation and propagation from experts in the field.

Sunjong pulls down the frond of a glossy, palmate leaf and flips it over to reveal a dark red underbelly. “This is called red-back plant,” he says, pointing to a hand-lettered sign pinned to its stalk, which he and Nyongo have prepared for the benefit of visitors. “It is used to treat anemia and excessive bleeding. It is boiled and prepared in a drink.” 

Sunjong moves up the path. “This is called ‘wonders of the world,’” he says, patting another specimen. “It is used for ear problems, stomach problems, and it is also good for fractures.” On he goes, reciting a litany of treatments that reflects the daily hassles and worries of any small-scale livestock producer: diarrhea—which he calls “purge”—in chickens, pigs, goats and cows; fresh wounds; worms; swelling.

Sunjong and Nyongo are storehouses of information about these plants and their uses. As in most communities that practice ethnoveterinary medicine, this information has been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation.

The term ethnoveterinary medicine encompasses a whole spectrum of practices, from the plants and substances used to treat ailments to the techniques employed in animal care. It is more provisional and less systematic than the medicine taught to veterinarians at universities, and it has its drawbacks. Doses may vary or be hard to measure since chemical levels vary from plant to plant, season to season, and equipment and measurements may not be standardized—a “handful,” “much,” “as much as the animal can take.” Not all plants are available year-round and may lose their potency when dried—or become more potent.

Materials and techniques are often improvised—one local remedy that Sunjong and Nyongo share involves using rabbit fur as a kind of gauze to quench bleeding. Such remedies can be cheap and convenient, but tend to be less effective, unsanitary and sometimes unavailable.

Remedies are sometimes linked with beliefs and superstitions, and can be more about ritual than about a cure. Most ethnoveterinary treatments do not work quickly, so they are not helpful for the rapid spread of infectious disease. And it can be a very local science.

Ninety percent of the plants in Nyongo and Sonjong’s garden are indigenous to the area. This makes these remedies very convenient and inexpensive, but it also makes them difficult to share—plants that grow and work well in one area may be less effective when grown somewhere else.

There are distinct advantages to ethnoveterinary medicine, too. The remedies can be surprisingly sophisticated and effective. Many of the commercial drugs used to treat both human and animal diseases are plant-derived, and over the centuries farmers and herders have discovered the naturally occurring chemicals that serve to clot blood, stop diarrhea and vomiting, relieve itching and swelling, and treat other common problems.

Ethnovets have also discovered simple solutions to healing wounds and bone fractures, invaluable to those who herd animals in the wild. And because ethnoveterinary remedies generally are cheaper and more convenient—critical concerns for the subsistence-level farmers Heifer helps—they help curb the casual use of antibiotics, which in turn reduces the development of antibiotic-resistant germs. Last but not least, the preservation of these plants for remedies helps preserve the environment and the biodiversity of the region.

Sharing the Knowledge
Unlike veterinary medicine, there is no formal textbook for ethnoveterinary medicine; it exists largely in the heads of local herders and farmers. How, then, to catalog and share this knowledge?

In programs around the world, Heifer facilitates meetings with farmers and herders to begin standardizing and sharing local knowledge of plants and remedies. Heifer teaches basic preservation processes, like distillation, to extract and preserve the chemicals in the plants, and thus make them more readily available. Heifer field staff also teaches a bit about intellectual property rights, making people aware of the potential value of this kind of knowledge.

At a recent meeting in Bamenda, Cameroon, a few dozen farmers and herders met with Heifer staff to work on revitalizing the ethnoveterinary program there. In this area of Cameroon, the Fulani people, who have been nomadic cattle herders for centuries, know a great deal about natural remedies for diseases in cattle. Small farmers and livestock herders from the area also attended the meeting, learning from the Fulani and sharing their knowledge as well.

Several of the participants had brought plants from their gardens, and gave presentations on proper uses and applications. A livestock holder named Fozoh William described his cure for lice in chickens: Ferment palm wine for five days, and then spray the flock with it. Sunjong Joseph suggested date palm seeds as a cure for worms, by grinding them and adding to the animal’s feed for three days. Tips were shared for inducing labor (jute leaves), curing brucellosis (a plant called kimbansha-anu), and curing “sexual weakness” (ripe guava fruits). Some of the remedies, the presenters noted, would be useful for humans, too.

In addition to information-sharing, one of the major goals of the conference was to establish a plan for improving livestock management in Cameroon using ethnoveterinary medicine. A five-year plan was established, with stages including: gathering information from herders and farmers, training herders and farmers in applied veterinary medicine, setting up nurseries in which to grow important species, taxonomically classifying the plants used in treatments, and conducting laboratory and field tests to validate remedies.

Conference participants also visited a nearby pharmaceutical factory, to see how plant essences are extracted using distillation and analyzed. At the factory, participants saw a sample of artemesia annua, a plant that is used to produce Malartin, a popular anti-malarial drug. This was an illustration not only of a plant that is useful for humans, but also one that is potentially quite valuable—one of the trickier issues in ethnoveterinary medicine.

Large pharmaceutical companies are often quite interested in the practices of ethnoveterinarians, hoping that this local wisdom will lead to the discovery of drugs that are useful (and marketable) for both humans and animals. Part of the goal of Heifer’s ethnoveterinary program is to educate the farmers and herders in the basics of intellectual property rights, and to lobby for policies and legislation that protects their rights.

For the farmers and herders, who often closely guard their traditional knowledge, passing it down from generation to generation, this is added reassurance that they will not be taken advantage of. “Traditionally,” says Sunjong, “this information is very secret. It is passed down through an initiation ceremony. But now, people are giving out this information in the hopes that it will be used properly and will be helpful to others.”

One of the biggest benefits of the program is that it helps farmers and herders understand that they are experts in their field and that their knowledge can be used to help others. For many of them, who have little formal education, this is the most important part. After the conference in Bamenda, one of the participants commented, “Ethnoveterinary medicine cannot be neglected. It will be a pride for us and for the program.”

Ethnovets, by keeping their traditional practices alive, are helping improve animal management, but they are also preserving their heritage and establishing their legacy. In Sunjong’s garden, the tour finishes with a look at his pasture, where he has planted “snakebite plant” in the corners to keep snakes away. Nyongo’s daughter, Esther, who has been learning the traditional remedies, appears and shyly explains the uses of a few plants, as the men beam. Nyongo gestures around the yard, at the tangle of carefully cultivated plants. “She knows almost as much as I do,” he says proudly.

Under the shade of a palm tree in the yard, Sunjong pulls out a coca seed and splits off a piece for a visitor to taste. “This garden really helps me. I can find what I need here,” he reflects. “If I don’t have money, I can still go get plants. It is immediate and free.” The visitor points to the tall, spiky, red-and-yellow flowers planted around the base of the tree. What, she inquires, is the purpose of those?

“Those?” Sunjong asks. He laughs. “Those are for decoration.”

ETHNOVETERINARY MEDICINE IN INDONESIA
Piten Purba, 49, has been a community animal health worker since 2005 in his native village of Siporkas. The most effective treatment for disease in livestock, he’s learned, is prevention.

But when an animal gets sick, Purba said, he often turns to traditional medicine, or jamu as it is known in the national language of Bahasa Indonesia.

One of the medicines is called jamu ternak. Standing in the middle of the remote village’s deeply rutted dirt road, Piten proudly displays a thick gnarled plant stem he’s just dug up nearby—yellow ginger root. “We make jamu ternak, a natural medicine, by combining yellow ginger root, brown sugar, pepper and egg,” he said.

Purba displays the ochre-colored liquid in a discarded water bottle. Jamu ternak is useful for deworming animals, as a digestive treatment for livestock and as a way of helping chickens to lay eggs. Yellow ginger root is also a natural antibiotic, he said. “I once used it to heal a cut on my arm.”