Livestock farmers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices for heartwater disease in Mpumalanga, South Africa

Smallholder livestock farmers’ inability to implement animal health practices well makes them vulnerable to disease outbreaks such as heartwater. There is limited insight and understating of the Tick Borne Disease (TBD), despite it being regarded as one of the most economically important and deadliest livestock diseases. This study aimed to assess smallholder livestock farmers’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) towards heartwater with the view of informing management interventions of the disease. 180 farmers were sampled through the multistage sampling in the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Descriptive statistics, KAP survey framework, which used Likert scale type questions and the Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) model were used to address the objectives of the study. Results revealed that most of the farmers in the study area were males, around an average age of 59 years and had primary education at best. There was a low level of knowledge of heartwater amongst the farmers, which was found to influence their attitude and practices. The MLR results revealed that gender, access to animal handling facilities, vaccines against heartwater disease and annual expenditure have a significant influence on the KAP of smallholder livestock farmers. It recommended that government should make dissemination of information on heartwater a priority to tackle the lack of knowledge that farmers have. Furthermore, subsidies are necessary for the expensive animal health medication and vaccines to allow farmers to protect their livelihood source against heartwater.