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Thesis (M. Agricultural Management (Animal Production)) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / Ethno veterinary medicine practices are popular among the resource constrained small-holder farmers. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of traditional remedies particularly the indigenous plants has not been extensively documented. Hence, this study was conducted to determine efficacy of indigenous plant extracts used by small-holder farmers in Chief Albert Luthuli Local Municipality, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa for internal parasites control. Information on indigenous plants used for the control of internal parasites of livestock by local farmers in the study area was gathered through a questionnaire survey. A total of 188 livestock farmers (both males and females) of mixed ages were interviewed. Thirteen different plants were frequently mentioned by the respondents as remedies for livestock internal parasites. Of these, seven plants could be identified up to their families and species. Plant species collected were Dicerocaryum sp (50%), Pappeacapensis (61%), Aloe ferox (90%), Helichrysum sp (56%), Senecio congestus (83%), Senecio barbertonicus (67%) and Gardenia sp (73%). These plants were extracted using distilled water and analysed to determine their efficacy through in vitro assays; Egg hatch, larval development and larval mortality assays. All the assays were performed at different concentrations of 2.5mg/ml, 5.0mg/ml and 7.5mg/ml. The nematode third stage larvae were incubated for 24hr, 48hr and 72hr during the larval mortality assay. The present study showed that all the seven-plant species under investigation possessed some anthelmintic activities of varying strength. The highest egg hatch inhibition was observed from the extracts of Senecio barbertonicus with 100 % and the lowest from Dicerocaryum eriocarpum with 2.25 %, for larval development the highest was Gardenia sp 100 % and the lowest Helichrysum sp 26 % at concentration 7.5 mg/mL respectively. Whereas, the highest in larval mortality assay was Senecio barbertonicus and Gardenia sp achieved 100 % after 48hrs and the lowest was Dicerocaryum eriocarpum with49.89 % after 72hrs at concentration 7.5 mg/mL respectively. The use of other different forms of extraction media is recommended because different results can observe and be compared with the results of the present study. Toxicity studies on the indigenous plants observed to have stronger anthelmintic activities would assist in the future recommendation of these remedies for large scale or commercial use as anthelmintic drugs. Keywords: ethno veterinary medicine, gastrointestinal parasites, anthelmintic

Abstract not available

The term aggregation refers to overdispersion and both are used interchangeably in this thesis. In addressing the problem of prevalence of infectious parasite species faced by most rural livestock farmers, we model the distribution of faecal egg counts of 15 parasite species (13 internal parasites and 2 ticks) common in sheep and goats. Aggregation and excess zeroes is addressed through the use of generalised linear models. The abundance of each species was modelled using six different distributions: the Poisson, negative binomial (NB), zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB), zero-altered Poisson (ZAP) and zero-altered negative binomial (ZANB) and their fit was later compared. Excess zero models (ZIP, ZINB, ZAP and ZANB) were found to be a better fit compared to standard count models (Poisson and negative binomial) in all 15 cases. We further investigated how distributional assumption a↵ects aggregation and zero inflation. Aggregation and zero inflation (measured by the dispersion parameter k and the zero inflation probability) were found to vary greatly with distributional assumption; this in turn changed the fixed-effects structure. Serial autocorrelation between adjacent observations was later taken into account by fitting observation driven time series models to the data. Simultaneously taking into account autocorrelation, overdispersion and zero inflation proved to be successful as zero inflated autoregressive models performed better than zero inflated models in most cases. Apart from contribution to the knowledge of science, predictability of parasite burden will help farmers with effective disease management interventions. Researchers confronted with the task of analysing count data with excess zeroes can use the findings of this illustrative study as a guideline irrespective of their research discipline. Statistical methods from model selection, quantifying of zero inflation through to accounting for serial autocorrelation are described and illustrated. / Statistics / M.Sc. (Statistics)