The Safety and Sero-conversion of a Mixed Peste Des Petits Ruminants and Sheep and Goat Pox Vaccine in Sheep and Goats in Kwale County, Kenya

Abstract

Kwale County is endowed with livestock wealth owing to her vast rangelands in the tropical climate and with areas that are not suitable for crop production, hence farmers solely relying on livestock livelihoods. The County has a population of about 377,047 sheep and goats from the previous livestock census conducted in 2019: (2019 census report) that are distributed across ranches and various households. Therefore, a disease affecting sheep and goats is a huge threat to most Kwale inhabitants whose income is dependent on the small stock. Peste des Petits Ruminants is an upcoming disease in Kwale County as per previous laboratory investigations conducted in Mwavumbo Ward Kinango sub-county in Kwale (Client Ref. No. 0112/2020) by the Central veterinary investigation laboratories (CVL) in Kabete, Kenya. Those findings confirmed the disease as emerging among affected sheep and goats across various households that were losing high numbers of the small ruminants. The current study was carried out in Kinango Sub-County, Kwale County in Kenya, to determine the immunogenicity of Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) and Sheep and Goat Pox (SGP) vaccine mixture in both sheep and goats, under normal field conditions. This was geared towards reducing pain and vaccine administration expenses, for cost effective disease control. A total of 47 sheep and 45 goats were first screened for PPR and SGP antibodies, to rule out previously vaccinated animals. The animals were also screened for any suspected underlying conditions associated with the disease and whether they had previous history of infections involving the two diseases. All of them were found to be negative for both PPR and SGP antibodies; also all the parameters monitored, based on body temperatures, were found to be within the normal range. However, only 41 sheep and 42 goats which were sero-negative (naïve) were recruited for the research because some of the animals were younger (less than three months) hence were eliminated from the study. The target animals were dewormed and...