Caprine haemonchosis: optimism of breeding for disease resistance in developing countries

Abstract

Haemonchosis is one of the major parasitic infestations in small ruminants and one of the significant causes for loss of production, morbidity and mortality in young sheep and goats. Conventional strategies for the control of haemonchosis involve breaking the life cycle of the worm using anthelmintic drugs, pasture management and animal management. However, indiscriminate and wide use of anthelmintic compounds may attribute to the development of resistance in the parasites. Therefore, a sustainable strategy needs to be implemented to effectively control haemonchosis in goats. One of the ways to achieve this is to breed animals for disease resistance. There are various genetic loci identified in goats that can be uzed as genetic markers to select resistant animals. However, their direct utilization in developing nations and field situations may be difficult due to the higher cost of gene based selection and multifactorial nature of the trait. Hence, breeding for nematode resistance in goats will require a more integrated approach using indicator traits to identify resistant breeds/lines/ animals and then adopting gene-based selection for organized farms.

Keywords

• Caprine haemonchosis
• disease resistance
• selection
• native breeds