Health and welfare assessment of working donkeys in and around Rama town, Tigray, Ethiopia

A cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2016 to April 2017 with the objectives to assess the major health problems and associated factors compromising welfare and health of working donkeys in and around Rama Town, Mereb Lake District, Central zone of Tigray Regional state Ethiopia. Both direct observational (animal based) and indirect (owner based) interviews were used to collect data. A total of 384 randomly selected working donkeys were examined and 120 donkey owners were interviewed. From these 27.1%, 45.3%, 9.9%, 22.9%, 17.2% and 41.7% donkeys were suffering from skin coat, wound, musculo-skeletal, parasitic, ocular and behavioral problems, respectively. The occurrence of wound varied significantly (p<0.05) among age categories and higher prevalence was noticed in donkeys more than 15 years of age (85.7%). The body condition score, duration of work and average weight loaded were also having significant (p<0.05) effect on wound prevalence. The findings of indirect assessment revealed that majority (96.7%) of the respondents in the study area had no knowledge and information on donkey welfare. Financial problems and high cost of drugs were the major constraints recorded in this study. The findings of present study indicated that welfare problems are highly prevalent in the working donkeys in the study area.