A new Survey has found that most farmers use local brew busaa to treat Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) among animals.

The highly communicable viral disease attack hooved animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, pigs as well wild animals such as buffaloes.

The survey was conducted by the Nakuru Regional Veterinary Investigation Laboratory (RVIL) in collaboration with the county veterinary staff.

According to the survey, a majority of the farmers whose animals were affected by the disease drenched them with local brew (busaa) as the treatment of choice.

Busaa is about 4 per cent alcohol, a concentration which is very mild as compared to surgical spirit, which is 70 per cent alcohol, so its medical value in killing the FMD virus is questionable.

The brew normally makes the animal drunk, thus reducing the pain in the foot and mouth wounds. The animal is therefore able to feed, thus boosting its immunity and recovery, but farmers should seek proper treatment.

A word of caution, however, is that the brew is stable for one to two days after production. Thereafter, acidification and denaturing take place, making the substance toxic.

Some farmers buy busaa that lasts for over five days, which implies that they could be poisoning the animals unintentionally and this explains the deaths that were occurring in adults, a rare condition as FMD is known to kill mostly young animals.

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  • Your Comment : I have now believed that we do not have an independent electoral and boundaries commission , instead we have a congregation of greedy individuals out to misuse Kenyans and bring chaos to our country. #Remove them. #clean the top leadership.

  • Congratulations to Governor Mutua,you really deserve to lead in the best performing governors,,, those ranked last should be dealt with accordingly for misappropriating public funds

  • Raila was the hunter now the hunted... how do trust a hyena like Uhuru.. You both greedy... you dug your grave lie in it... What handshake.. Crap...

  • Babu aje zake,handshake is for all Kenyans, and Kibra believe in handshake, there4, Uhuru And Raila should have different candidates and whoever Will go through Will be thé product of handshake

  • Hehehe, supporting somebody was not an agreement in the handshake my friends!! Remember Raila caused many to die during the era of maandamano hence Uhuru devised a method how to tame this power hungry man!! Mariga must win

  • Your Raila and uhuru come from different political party,. Everyone is free to handle his party issues and i salute the president for supporting mariga being the jubilee candidate. Raila is also supporting the odm candidate and no one is against that. Some people are taking handshake as political party while it's not. Please mr mp style up.

  • Babu wacha kiherehere or baba will tie u the same tree kidero and obado were rope tied when the latters looked threatening the leadership of baba in nyanza

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