Abstract

A questionnaire based survey and a cross-sectional study was conducted on purposefully selected 60 individual lactating she-camel owners and 244 lactating she-camels from 3 privately owned camel dairy farms, respectively with the aim of investigating camel mastitis prevalence and characterization and determination of antibiotic sensitivity on camel mastitis causing agents in and around jigjiga city of fafan zone, Somali region, Ethiopia. Furthermore, direct interview with dairy camel farm owners were conducted. About 66.7% and 33.3% of dairy camel owners apply herd grazing method and separate grazing method. In this study 98.3% of the respondents told that there is a feed shortage problem. Moreover, 65%, 25% and 10% of the respondents treat clinically sick camels with modern vet drugs, traditional medicines and combination of the two, respectively. The overall prevalence of sub-clinical mastitis in the study area was 10.6%. The prevalence of subclinical mastitis at she-camel level was 12.5%, 11.1% and 9.9% in Suleka, Dhaygel and Barkomal dairy camel farms, respectively. Thus 100%, 89.4%, 61.6% and 69.8% of the S. aureus, Str. agalactiae, Str. dysgalactiae and P. multocida, respectively were found to be highly susceptible to erythromycin. Hence, erythromycin was best drug of choice. From the 510 isolated bacteria 84.5%, 60%, 44.7% and 36.7% were sensitive to Erythromycin, Streptomycin, Oxytetracycline and Tetracycline, respectively. Furthermore, results of the camel dairy farm owners’ interview revealed that neither the farmers emphasized the need to milk healthy cows first and the diseased cows later to prevent transmission of mastitis nor the milkers used disinfectant and even water to clean teats before and after milking.