Exploration of Traditional Plant Based Medicines Used as Potential Remedies for Livestock Aliments in Northeastern Ethiopia
Abstract Background Livestock production is an integral part of the agricultural industry and to the livelihood of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. However, livestock diseases and erosion of medicinal plants need urgent attention. Therefore this study was conducted to explore the ethnoveterinary plants and practices used to treat livestock ailments across varied agroclimatic zones in northeastern Ethiopia. Methods Information on the ethnoveterinary plants was collected between December 2019 and July 2020 across three districts using semi-structured questionnaire. The generated data included types of plants, parts used, preparations and routes of administration for treating livestock ailments. ANOVA and Chi-square were used to compute ethnoveterinarical indices among agroclimates. Results The present study revealed that there was a significant association (P = 0.001) between numbers of ethnoveterinary plant citations with sex, and age categories (P = 0.02), however, there were no considerable associations in educational status (P = 0.07). A total of 95 plants in 44 families were used by the healers for treatments of 45 livestock ailments. The ANOVA result showed that there was a significant difference in distribution of medicinal plant species (P < 0.01) in the agroclimatic zones. Irrespective of the variation, the most cited plant family with the largest number of species 10 (10.52 %) was Asteraceae and herbs 39 (42.8 %) were the dominant growth form reported. The most common plant part used for formulation of remedies was leaves 41 (39.05%) and crushing and pounding were the dominant mode of preparations. Most of plants were from the wild 65(70.65%) habitat. Considerable variations in Use Value (UV), Relative Frequency of Citations (RFC) and Fidelity Level (FL) were observed among the survived agroclimates. Datura stramonium (UV = 0.85; FL = 90.4 %; RFCs = 0.8) was the most often cited species to treat livestock ailments. The highest ICF was observed for bloating (0.87), bloody diarrhea (0.85) and eye infection (0.84), respectively. Conclusions The studied districts are rich in both medicinal floras and concomitant traditional knowledge for the treatment of livestock ailments and therefore further studies on the phytochemical screening of ethnoveterinary plants is vital for inventory of pharmacological active ingredients and production of drugs.