Ethnoveterinary treatment of livestock in Ghana: Cultural importance and consensus on plants used

The traditional free-range system of livestock rearing contributes to the socioeconomic well-being of most rural households in Ghana. The traditional management system exposes livestock to a high disease incidence, but healthcare support for animal production is limited. Ethnoveterinary practice is an integral part of livestock treatment, particularly in rural communities where veterinary services are poor. However, documentation of the plants used for ethnoveterinary treatment of livestock is scant in the country. Given the dearth of information on ethnoveterinary treatment, this study aimed to document the cultural significance and level of agreement of plant species used for treating livestock ailments in the Adaklu district. Ethnoveterinary data were collected from 120 respondents using semi-structured questionnaires. Quantitative ethnobotanical indices were used to ascertain the most culturally significant plant species for livestock healing. It was found that 38 plant species were used to treat various livestock ailments. Ethnobotanical indices revealed that Mangifera indica, Elaeis guineensis, Khaya senegalensis, Spondias mombin, and Physalis peruviana were the most culturally significant plant species for treating livestock ailments. Mangifera indica was found to be the most versatile species for treating livestock ailments and had the highest cultural importance (CI). This study reveals the high cultural importance of plants in the Adaklu district to improve livestock healthcare. The perceived efficacy influences the selection and utilization of a resource for folk medicine. The study recommends isolating and characterizing the active compounds in the most culturally significant plants and testing the properties on the medical conditions attributed to these plants.


Introduction
Livestock production is a significant economic activity in Ghana and provides a vital source of income, assets, and food and nutritional security for households [1,2].The predominant method for raising livestock in the nation is still the traditional extensive production system, or free-range system, which permits animals to graze without limitations [2][3][4].The management system exposes scavenging animals to dangerous conditions, such as bacterial, viral, and parasitic pathogens that increase their susceptibility to infections [5,6].Accordingly, a high disease incidence is associated with Ghana's free-range system of producing livestock, and it has become a significant obstacle that undercuts benefits [4,[6][7][8].In order to address the disease-related morbidity in livestock, proper healthcare provision is therefore required.Traditional medicine methods, often known as ethnoveterinary care, are frequently used to enhance animal healthcare.
Ethnoveterinary treatment of livestock diseases is widely practiced in other African countries [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and other countries worldwide [18][19][20][21].In remote and undeveloped areas, there is a lack or limited access to modern veterinary services to cater to livestock healthcare needs, and ethnoveterinary remedies remain a prominent complementary medical practice for treating diseases [10,18].The use of ethnoveterinary medicine is an integral part of veterinary services for the treatment of livestock in Ghana, and various natural-based products have been documented to be used to treat livestock ailments [22][23][24][25][26][27].The perceived effectiveness in treating particular ailments, availability and accessibility of plant resources, and cultural practice are the main factors fueling the reliance on ethnoveterinary practice in Ghana [25].
Plant-based materials for treating livestock are an essential component of Ghana's free-range production system.Despite the acknowledged use of plant-based materials for livestock treatment in the country, there is a dearth of comprehensive information regarding the plants species used for treating livestock ailments.By documenting plant species, ethnoveterinary medicine plays a vital role in maintaining traditional knowledge about therapeutic plants and preserving them for future generations [10].In addition to offering a chance for new drug discovery from beneficial natural products [21], ethnoveterinary inventory can highlight the well-known species of interest to communities to assess the threat to conservation accurately [28][29][30].
The Guinea Savannah zone -the largest known area for livestock production [31] is where most Ghanaian ethnoveterinary studies were conducted.The Volta region is becoming increasingly significant for livestock production, particularly in the savanna areas, but little is known about the ethnoveterinary practices associated with free-range livestock production in the region.Access to veterinary services for animal production limits the region's free-range livestock production systems, and, like other parts of the nation, ethnoveterinary practice is the standard approach to animal health care.This study sought to identify the plant species that free-range producers use to treat livestock ailments and to document the cultural significance of these species as well as the degree of agreement regarding their application.The study hypothesizes that the rural nature of the study area, coupled with limited access to veterinary services and a high prevalence of free-range animal husbandry systems, makes livestock caretakers knowledgeable about plant species for ethnoveterinary practice.

Study area
The study was conducted in Ghana's Volta Region's Adaklu District, which is situated at latitudes 00 • 20′1 • E and 0.33361 • E and longitudes 06 • 41′1 • N and 6.68361 • N. According to the Ghana Statistical Service [32], the study area is bordered to the east by Ho-West, to the south by North-Tongu District, to the north by Agotime-Ziope District, and to the east by Akatsi-North District.There are 38,649 people living in the Adaklu District, which has a total land area of 810 km 2 [33].The district is entirely rural and most of the population raise livestock and cultivate crops for subsistence.A fifth of the district's total land area is devoted to livestock production, which is essential to the livelihood of the local populace.The use of veterinary services is influenced by small herd sizes, the cost of services, and the lack of access to veterinary officers in rural areas [3].The district is ideally suited to investigate ethnoveterinary practices because of its rural nature, small herd sizes from subsistence farming practice, and high prevalence of free-range animal husbandry systems.Local communities have been found to rely on traditional medicine to treat human ailments [34] and ethnoveterinary treatment for free-range chicken diseases [35].It is expected that a significant amount of livestock healthcare will be provided by ethnoveterinary practices in the district.

Sampling procedure and data collection
There are 12 operational areas in the study district that provide agricultural extension services.The extension service staff of Agricultural Services Department helped identify informants in the 12 zones.The criteria used to select the informants included herd size (no less than 10), years of experience producing livestock on a free-range basis (minimum of 10 years), recognition of complementary ethnoveterinary practices (since none of them solely rely on natural materials), and responsibility for animal health and disease management (necessarily animal property rights).Ten informants were chosen from each of the 12 zones based on these specifications.The study's purpose was explained to the community leaders who gave their informed consent to undertake the research in their community.
Semi-structured interviews were used in March and April of 2023 to gather ethnoveterinary information from the study informants.The informants were primarily questioned about local plant names, parts used, preparation and application techniques, and ailments treated.Sheep and goats dominate the household traditional system small ruminants' production among households in Ghana [1,2], and the questions were limited to these two livestock.The respondents were motivated through verbal prompts and probes to elicit information.Most respondents who could not speak English used the Ewe language, spoken most frequently in the district, as their lingua franca during the interviews.The research assistants were all proficient in both English and Ewe.
To identify plant species, the local names that the respondents had mentioned were compared to those found in the literature [36,37].Additionally, by comparing the collected plant materials with voucher specimens at the University of Health and Allied Sciences Institute of Traditional and Alternative Medicine (ITAM), their identity was confirmed.The names and authority of plant species were established using electronic databases Plants of the World Online (https://powo.science.kew.org).

Table 1
Plant species used for the treatment of livestock ailments in the Adaklu District with their ethnobotanical indices.

Data analysis
The following ethnobotanical indices were identified for each plant species: Use Report (UR), Cultural Importance (CI), Frequency of Citation (FC), Number of Uses (NU), Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC), and Relative Importance Index (RI) using the ethnobotany R package version 4.3.1.According to Ref. [38], the UR values for each species account for the total number of uses within each use category as well as the number of informants who mention each use category for the species.According to Ref. [39], the cultural importance (CI) index determines the cultural importance index for every species in the data set.Prance et al. [38] defined the number of uses (NU) per species as the total of all categories deemed useful for a given species and the frequency of citation (FC) per species as the total of informants citing a use for the same species in the dataset.The relative frequency of citation (RFC) determines the significance of every species based on the number of informants who reported using it.The relative importance (RI) index calculates the relative importance of each species in the data set, considering only the use categories [39].

Informant agreement ratio
The degree of agreement among respondents regarding plant species used to treat a particular livestock ailment was measured using the informant agreement ratio (IAR).Trotter and Logan's [40] original formula was interpreted as follows in equation ( 1): where Nur = is the total number of use reports recorded for a given plant species, and Na = is the total number of illnesses a specific plant species has treated.The IAR ranges from 0 (where there is no agreement or consensus regarding the livestock ailments a plant species treats) to 1 (where there is agreement regarding the livestock ailments a plant species treats).
To gain insight into the livestock ailments that plant species were used to treat, a word cloud visual representation of word frequency was employed using WordItOut.The size of the words corresponds to how frequently the informants brought up the terms.
Retained placenta (n = 114) was the most frequently mentioned illness, followed by diarrhea (n = 113), nasal discharge (n = 98), endoparasites (n = 74), and poisoning (n = 58).The condition mentioned the least (n = 1) was tail wagging.A visual presentation of the livestock ailments identified to be treated in this study is presented in Fig. 2. C. frutescens, S. campanulata, and A. difformis (IAR = 1) had the highest IAR (and thus consensus) for the treatment of livestock ailments and were used explicitly for broken legs, lethargy, and nasal discharge, respectively.A. digitata recorded the second highest consensus (IAR = 0.941) and was followed by P. peruviana (IAR = 0.932), C. papaya (IAR = 0.915), and K. senegalensis (IAR = 0.906).The supplementary sheet provides the contributions of the 38 plant species to the CI and IAR for treating 32 specific ailments.

Discussion
The number of plant species recorded in this study for the treatment of livestock ailments was greater than the previous studies on the ethnoveterinary treatment of livestock in Ghana [23,26,41].The sociocultural knowledge of people living in a particular locality informs the selection and application of medicinal plants for the ethnoveterinary treatment of livestock diseases [9,11,17,42].Differences in ecological zones also result in variations in plant species and their application for ethnoveterinary purposes [11].Previous ethnoveterinary studies mentioned were undertaken in the Northern part of the country, which has a different sociocultural group and belongs to a different ecological zone.The variation in the number of plant species found in this study compared to other studies in Ghana may be explained by sociocultural differences and variations in ecological zones.
The number of plant species used for ethnoveterinary purposes in this study compares favorably with similar ethnoveterinary inventories in sub-Saharan African countries.The number of plant species identified to be used for treating livestock ailments was 38 in Mozambique [14], 31 and 30 by Refs.[43,44], respectively, in Nigeria, 26 in Burkina Faso [17], 15 in Namibia [16], 12 in South Africa [15].However, Tchetan et al. [11] study identified 101 plant species to be used in the ethnoveterinary treatment of livestock diseases in the Benin Republic.The differences in plant species diversity between the two studies can be attributed to the coverage area.While this study covered only one administrative district and ecological zone, Tchetan et al. [11] study was national in focus and covered all the ecological zones in the country.Indeed [11], study recorded a higher plant species diversity relative to similar studies in Benin with limited coverage area.The dominance of the Asteraceae family was consistent with these studies [19,45].Trees as the most dominant life forms for treating livestock diseases was consistent in other studies [15,17] and justified by their availability throughout the year, irrespective of the season.The leaf as the most used plant part was consistent with the [14][15][16][17]20,43,44] study findings.The ease of collection and modes of different applications are attributes that facilitates leaf's widespread use in ethnoveterinary medicine [17].This study's high preference for oral administration was consistent with [16,45].The oral and topical routes allow rapid physiological reactions, increasing ethnoveterinary medicine's curative power [10].
The suite of livestock diseases identified in this study was consistent with other studies in Ghana [23,26,41] and other studies on livestock disease treatment with ethnoveterinary care [11,16,19,43,44].The plant species used to treat specific livestock ailments were consistent with previous research in Ghana and other countries.The range of illnesses that M. indica treats was consistent with their ethnoveterinary application in prior researches Nigeria and Benin Republic [12,46].K. senegalensis ethnoveterinary application for the treatment of ailments in this study has been mentioned in previous studies in Ghana [26,41] and other countries in West Africa [11,13,44,46,47].G. amygdalinum for the treatment of retained placenta has been recorded in a previous study in Ghana by Ansah and Nagbila [41].The application of A. indica to treat wounds was consistent with Ayeni and Basiri's [44] study in Nigeria.The use of C. papaya and K. senegalensis in this study's endoparasite treatment is supported by Ref. [43].The use of E. guineensis oil for treating ingested poison has been recorded in folk traditional medicine [48,49] and for livestock in Nigeria [44], and free-range chicken in Ghana [35].The application of S. mombin in the treatment of reproductive diseases was in line with the results of Tchetan et al. [11] in Benin Republic.P. peruviana, like S. mombin, was valued for its ability to heal reproductive disorders.This study showed a high CI and IAR for P. peruviana, contrary to Ref. [50] assertion that it is rarely used for ethnoveterinary purposes.
M. indica, E guineensis, K. senegalensis, S. mombin, P. peruviana, and C. papaya high CI values indicate that these plant species are frequently used in treating livestock ailment and hold a high level of cultural importance as a source of plant-based material.It has been suggested that a CI value of more than one indicates that the local communities use the particular resource to treat various medical conditions [34,35,51,52].The high CI for M. indica implies that it is extremely important for treating livestock ailments.M. indica was the most medicinally versatile plant species for ethnoveterinary purposes and was highly valued for treating nasal discharge and diarrhea.The informant agreement ratio (IAR) indicates the homogeneity of ethnobotanical information [53].Plant species with a high IAR suggest that, because of their perceived effectiveness, they have become essential to local cultural knowledge [53].Despite having the highest IAR, C. frutescens, S. campanulata, and A. difformis are considered culturally fringe knowledge because of their below average mentions, based on Heinrich et al. [54] assertion.The above-average mentions of A. digitata, P. peruviana, C. papaya, K. senegalensis, S. mombin, E. guineensis, and M. indica indicate that they are all essential components of local cultural knowledge; their high IAR may reflect their perceived cultural efficacy in treating livestock ailments.
The choice and application of a resource for folk medicine are influenced by the perceived efficacy of that resource within a culture [53].Thomas et al. [55] assert that the reference does not imply the local community's view of the effectiveness of traditional medicine in treating a specific ailment.Heinrich et al. [54] state that species mentioned infrequently or less frequently may not be useful for treating the condition(s) mentioned, which may be considered a part of the fringe culture or may have become obsolete due to cultural adaptation.Most plant species have citation rates that are below average, which could mean that they are part of cultural folklore and do not work well for treating specific ailments.This could be the case concerning the below average citations of plant species, which lead to low CI and homogeneity in their use.Despite being listed in the traditional pharmacopeia, these plant species might not be useful for treating or easing symptoms.
Compared to earlier studies, most of the plant species in this study were more widespread in their applications.The cultural transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge could account for the variations in the uses of plants in this study as opposed to earlier research.Intergenerational transmission is the primary way of knowledge about how a resource is handed down in small local communities [56,57].The majority of knowledge comes primarily from family or community members.Family members verbally transmitting their knowledge of using medicinal plants for healing over several generations is the most common way folk medical information is passed down in Ghana [58][59][60].Comparing M. indica to other studies, its high versatility may be explained by localized knowledge.The low CI of G. amygdalinum, which is highly valued for ethnoveterinary purposes in Ghana [23] and other countries [40,[61][62][63], may be explained similarly by disparities in knowledge.The variation can be attributed to localized knowledge about their ethnoveterinary significance.The knowledge systems are not standardized, so there is variation in how they are applied, even for the most prevalent species.

Conclusion
This study focused on the cultural importance and level of agreement on using plant-based materials in treating livestock ailments.A high degree of agreement, relative importance, and cultural significance were found for certain plant species when treating livestock ailments.The high ethnobotanical indices indicate that ethnoveterinary practices contribute to the health improvement of livestock animal production in the Adaklu district.The most culturally significant species for treating livestock ailments were M. indica, M.K. Boakye et al.E. guineensis, K. senegalensis, S. mombin, P. peruviana, and C. papaya.The culturally significant plants found in this study may contain active compounds with medicinal value, as perceived efficacy influences the selection and use of resources for folk medicine.The study recommends isolation and characterization of the active compounds in the most culturally significant plants and testing the efficacy against medical conditions attributed to these plants.Based on the IUCN Red List of Species, only K. senegalensis is considered a conservation concern among the culturally significant plants.

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.The life form (a), plant parts used (b), mode of administration (c) and preparation of plants used (d) for the treatment of livestock in the Adaklu district.

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. Word cloud of the livestock ailments mentioned by respondents to be treated with plant-based material.Maximum mentions are 114 for retained placenta and a minimum of 1 for tail wagging.