HÀ NỘI — Farmers in the countryside district of Ba Vì in Hà Nội are working to keep their farm animals fat and healthy for the upcoming year-end festive season. Their main concern is how to protect the herds from fatal diseases.

Đặng Văn Thanh is the owner of a large barn in Minh Quang Commune, raising 250 sows and up to 400-500 pigs. With such a large number of pigs together, if one catches an infectious disease, it would be a disaster for the farm.

Thanh said he went extra mile to prevent his pigs from getting sick.

“Every pig will have vaccinations for as many kinds of diseases as possible from the beginning. I also spray disinfectant in the barn once a week and use chemicals to remove odour twice a month,” he said.

The farmer also tried to make homemade feed for his pigs by grinding local food and veggies to make nice, clean and cheap meals for the animals. Thanh said he wanted to rely less on industrial feed to have better quality pigs and better control disease outbreaks.

In the neighbouring commune of Thụy An, Nguyễn Thị Yên has a new small-scale 500 chick flock for Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday. Yên said that not only her but many other households also expanded their poultry flock to prepare for expected high demand in the next few months.

She, however, was worried as it is now rainy season and the weather this year was unpredictable, perfect conditions for a disease outbreak.

Ba Vì Veterinary Station recently warned farmers to stay on guard this time of the year.

Station chief Hoàng Văn Dương said the rainy season was not favourable for the health of the animals. Their immune systems were weakened and they could easily catch a disease.

“To help the farmers, the station will closely work together with the vet commissions in all 31 communes and town (of Ba Vì) to monitor slaughtering activities, to carry out the second universal vaccination campaign and the fifth disinfectant campaign by the end of 2018,” he said.

Over the past four disinfectant campaigns since early this year, Ba Vì vet station provided 13,300 litres of chemicals to spray more than 17 million sq.m of barns and farms in the locality.

It also vaccinated 36,000 cows for foot and mouth disease, 85 per cent of the total number of cows raised in Ba Vì.

More than 50 per cent of pigs received vaccinations for foot and mouth, blue ear and diarrhea diseases, while the same rate for poultry were vaccinated for bird flu. — VNS