Mara Mobile Veterinary Unit

Category: Livestock | Date: Feb 25 2007 | By: admin

During my two weeks stay in the Mara, I observed and treated the following cases (and reported to local DVO) :

Foot and Mouth Disease
Trypanosomosis
East Coast Fever
Flea allergic Dermatitis
Mange
Brucellosis

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Category: Maasai People | Date: Feb 25 2007 | By: admin

I was invited to a circumcision ceremony (Darengo) in one of the boma for two boys because they were home over their school holiday. ‘Come and watch closely’ my friend said as he pulled my hand as we both entered the boma. I was not sure if a woman was allowed to watch the ceremony, but my friend told me it was okay and that other ladies were also there to watch. The two boys came out of the bush accompanied by several singing warriors (Moran) with red orcher covered head and beaded jewerely around their neck. The boys looked like they were about thirteen and on each face they showed tension. After cow hide was layed on the ground, one boy sat down on it. Several guys grabbed onto him from behind while others held onto his legs. There were too many people around that I could not see the actual operation, but managed to see the boy before he was taken away. His legs were shaking a little bit and I didn’t brame him for that. Although Maasai culture does not allow boys to cry or scream during the circumcision as it is sign of cowardice, it must be scary for a little boy to go through such an operation without any anesthetic.

Meat feast by the visiting people

Roasted meat served on a plate (leaves)

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Category: Life of a Vet | Date: Feb 25 2007 | By: admin

During my stay in the Mara, my tiny two-man tent is my home. I pitched this tent on a campsite below the ranger’s house at the Oloololo gate. One night, around midnight, I was shaken awake to a loud noise. As it was raining outside just before I went to sleep, the tarp of my tent had been zipped up and I couldn’t peep outside to see what was making all the noise, but I could tell that large animals were running through the nearby bush. Following the rustling sound there was a very loud shreaking voice. Shortly thereafter I heard a soft sound of something stepping on a twig, followed again by an earth shaking rumble, similar to the sound of water passing through an empty pipe.

Great, elephants…

The rumbling noise came from all corners. In the middle of the savannah, trapped inside my tiny tent and surrounded by a herd of elephants. My car was parked right next to the tent but the thought of zipping open the tent and spooking the elephants seemed too risky to attempt. My heart raced as I sat inside the tent hearing the rumbling and trumpet. The elephants stayed near my tent for almost 45 minutes. Then shortly before dawn, a buffalo visited the area, followed by a lion chasing a hippo just past my tent. I really wished for either a large canvas tent or better yet, a permanent structure during my stay in Mara.

Munching away…

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Category: Wildlife | Date: Feb 25 2007 | By: admin

One Maasai man living close to Kiringani left a report for Francis claiming that he saw a dead zebra just on the bottom of the escarpment previous evening. The bottom of the escarpment is inside the reserve boundary. As we stood looking down on the area the man claimed to see the zebra, it was obvious that it would not be possible to descend the escarpment from there. The slope was too steep and too rocky. The only access to the point was from the bottom of the escarpment. Thus, we were accompanied by two Mara Conservancy rangers on our endless search for the dead zebra. We drove as close as possible to the escarpment as we could get and then parked the car. The two rangers started looking for the zebra as I waited sitting on top of the roof rack of the car. After searching for an hour, the rangers returned telling me the zebra was nowhere to be found. Most likely it had been cleaned up by our scavenger friends during the night.

Modern invention, darubino (binocular), aids in our search for the dead zebra.

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Category: Livestock | Date: Feb 25 2007 | By: admin

The Maasai have taught me how to differentiate the cattle brand marks in the area. Each Maasai family has different mark branded on their cattle. The brand tends to be on the right lateral side of the animal, together with some marks on its face and cuts on the ears. If one family buys a cattle from another, the cattle will have both family brands on its body. So far I can distinguish cattle belonging to three families living along the escarpment. It always amazed me how the guys would tell me ‘oh, this herd belong to so and so’ and know who exactly owned the cattle. After getting to know a specific family brand, I found that it was not such a difficult task to differentiate who owned which cattle.

My friend tells me this starved cattle is not Siria clan’s. He says that this brand mark is of Purko Maasai’s.

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Category: Wildlife | Date: Feb 24 2007 | By: admin

We are in the middle of one of the worst droughts experienced in the past couple of years and most of the livestock show severe emaciation due to lack of pasture available in the area. I drove past one herd of cattle and I was asked to come take a look at some sick cattle. The herdsman showed his animals which were extremely emaciated and weak. We took a blood sample from the animals for further investigation. Just as we were leaving the place, a loud trumpet noise of an elephant was heard from a not very distant bush. Suddenly there was a herd of cattle running out from the bush, followed by even louder trumpet and rustling of the trees.

‘Ndofu! Kimbia!’ (Elephant! Run!)

Francis quickly grabbed my drug box and took off towards the direction of the car. Spooked cattle ran pass me and I too started to run. I was running together with three Maasai men and a herd of cattle until we reached the car and quickly jumped inside it. After chasing away the cattle, the elephant decided to return to the bush and was no longer in our sight. We were later being told that there was a herd of elephants with a one-week old calf which, I was guessing, its mother was the one who chased us.

In the Mara, elephants are not very happy about cattle grazing close to them and tend to chase them away when cattle get too close, but they hardly ever kill. Funny thing is that this is not the case when it comes to flock of sheep. Elephants will stomp on the sheep without any hesitation whenever it encounters a flock (but they don’t kill goats!). No one really knows why elephants tend to kill the sheep and not the other species. Any idea anyone?

Elephant, simply a magnificent animal…(this particular one is from Amboseli, not Mara).

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Category: Wildlife | Date: Feb 24 2007 | By: admin

Male impalas fight with each other over dominance and maintenance his female herd, harem. One dominant male holds the reproductive right and the bachelor males constantly try to challenge this right. Outcome of their fight may result in death following a stab by a sharp horn, as it was the case with the impala carcass we found today.

From far, we thought jackals were feeding on an antelope, but instead it turned out to be Maasai dogs. As we approached closer, they lifted their blood covered faces and fled, leaving the impala carcass with guts hanging out. From the stab wound on its abdomen, it was obvious that the animal died from shock. A blood loss resulting from externally inflicted wounds, most likely by another male impala. Struggle to reproduce can easily end up in death here in the savannah.

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Category: Wildlife | Date: Feb 24 2007 | By: admin

I had never really fully appreciated the function of the olfactory sense in the past besides it being able to distinguish between a good and bad smell. Now that I was competing with hyenas and vultures over dead zebra, I wished for a keener sensory organ. For the last two days I had been driving around looking and asking herders whether they had seen dead zebras. So far, I lost three reported carcasses to my scavenger friends. While I depend on reports from the Maasai and my own visual field while driving, vultures and hyenas tag up and open up the carcasses before I arrive.

Vultures surveillance the savannah from the sky, while hyenas and jackals use their sense of smell to get to carcasses from the ground. I see vultures soaring up in the sky starting around ten in the morning when the hot air gets pushed up, thus giving them a good lift. During the day, vultures are my competitor up to say noon. From noon the sun gets too hot and I do not see as many vultures in the sky. I then have up to six in the evening to search for the carcasses. If I don’t manage to find any before the darkness sets in, hyenas take over the night and I have no chance against them. It is amazing how clean the savannah gets after those scavengers get to a carcass. Several times I have arrived to the reported scene and only found signs of blood and fecal matter on the ground, nothing else. No bone, no skin, no hooves. I was never in a position to compete with a scavenger in my life, but now that I am in the midst of competition, I give my applause to the work of the scavengers here in the savannah ecosystem.

What is left after the vultures fly away. Hyenas will take over the task at night. Nothing goes waste in savannah.

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Category: Wildlife | Date: Feb 24 2007 | By: admin

At seven in the evening, I received a message from a ranger to meet up with Francis who had found a dead zebra on the escarpment. He told me to hurry before the hyenas got to the carcass. Driving at night, even outside the reserve, is a difficult task since I cannot navigate myself with just trees and rocks. I can get lost even during the day, so the night time driving to Francis’ boma (village) had to be done with the assistance of a Maasai ranger. Even with him, however, we managed to get lost in the dark for one hour before reaching Francis’s boma where a fence was made of accacia thorns and looked just like any other bush when shown under a car’s headlight.

When we arrived at the scene, I wondered how a reported dead zebra managed to transform itself into a dead topi, but it had. Once again, no external wound nor discharge could be seen on the animal. As it was pitch dark, we turned on the headlight from the car in order to do a postmortem. No pallor of the mucous membrane, no unusual swelling, no severe worm infestation. Nothing really abnormal, I thought, until I cut open the diaphragm to check the chest cavity. Liters of fluid mixed pus gushed out from the cut I made on the diaphragm. I shined my torch to see what was going on with the chest cavity and it was not a pretty scene. Sever inflammation of the lung lobes with severe congestion with some parts adhering to pleura. Diaphragm was covered with pus and was melting away. Pericardial cavity (around the heart) was filled with pus and so was the trachea. It looked like the animal drowned itself in the pus filled fluid. I cut out an organ sample from the chest cavity, took several swabs of the pus and made a blood smear for bacteriology. It was ten in the evening by the time we finished covering up the topi with accacia branch so other animals or people wouldn’t get to it. The lesion resembled that of CBPP (Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia), but I was not really sure if it crossed over to wild ruminants. It surely looked like a bacterial infection, but I needed to send the sample to a bacteriology lab once I returned to Nairobi. I hoped I would not hear of any other topi dying with the same condition because that would be a concern.

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Category: Livestock | Date: Feb 24 2007 | By: admin

I was called into a boma (village) where the cattle were affected by FMD (Foot and Mouth Disease). Twenty or so cattle out of a herd of a hundred were affected, showing skin erosion on interdigital space and palate of the mouth. In the Maasai land, FMD is a chronic disease where lesions are not severe compared to ones seen in exotic breeds. The East African Zebu breeds have been living in this area for thousands of years and have developed strong resistance to the FMD. Maasai fear anthrax but FMD seems to be less of a concern. They believe that FMD goes away on its own (and it often does). They don’t quarantine sick from the healthy animals and they seems to not mind when a sick calf is suckling from a healthy dam. I advised the owner to try to separate the sick from the healthy, but he simply told me that it was impossible. To my surprise, he had been using cattle urine to disinfect the foot lesion because he did not have any disinfectant. I was later told that some people also use a local brew (changaa) for disinfection. We disinfected all this sick animals, sprayed the wounds and covered them with long acting antibiotics. I reported the FMD case to the DVO (District Veterinary Officer), but it seemed odd reporting the case because the disease was all over the place following the recent wildebeest migration.

Leading cattle into crush

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