Why not use medicinal plants with animals?
- At the end of September a special training on medicinal plants was carried out in the Azpeitia Azoka Square. Although in recent years the interest, knowledge and use of medicinal plants are increasing, in livestock farming it is not too widespread. That is why the Biolur Association, which promotes organic farming, organised a training session with the aim of putting the first starting point. Azpeitia was a date to reflect and share information on the different uses that medicinal plants can have in cattle, with the assistance of veterinarian Ane Rivas de Biolur and expert Garbiñe Larrea.
“One of the first works was to detect livestock needs, as we saw that in cattle, as in people, health is very medicalized and its monopoly almost exclusively depends on allopathic pharmacy medication,” explains Larrea. However, they detected the lack of resources and knowledge to work other ways and the difficulty of finding safe and effective practices. That's why they started researching and collecting material to prepare the session a little bit.
“I’ve always worked on people, and at first I thought, “What do I do with six-legged bugs?” But then I realized that when my brother was riding horses in rural sports, we had a lot of work to cure animals, even if it wasn’t veterinary,” he says. The interest of farmers in the rapid occupation of 30 training places has been noted. It identified the typical problems of the animals: leg pains, reproductive disorders, udder pains, weakness after delivery, wounds and exciters, problems with viruses and bacteria that multiply…
Basic kit
“In the collection of material we have seen that in South America there are veterinary practices with medicinal plants, that here there are also veterinarians and that those who have seen are valid,” explains Larrea. The training objective has been, together with other medical resources, to accommodate from the point of view of complementarity. The meeting created a basic kit for their animals, which will now be tested gradually. “We have worked remedies for burns, wounds, enlargements, etc. to create a kit for your everyday problems,” he added.
As the grassland has explained, many of the formulae that have often been used for man also serve animals, although they have normally been used for them for butters and similar instead of fine oil. “As for internal use, there has been no good transmission here and there are not too many spaces for exchanging mutual information in the sector. They need to emerge and collect information.” Work has been done on the collection and systematization of different practices and remedies to know and disseminate what are valid. “This is going to follow, as the farmers try, the response we are going to receive will serve to continue the process.”
