Exploration of Traditional Plant Based Medicines Used as Potential Remedies for Livestock Aliments in Northeastern Ethiopia

Background Livestock production is an integral part of the agricultural industry and to the livelihood of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. However, livestock diseases and erosion of medicinal plants need urgent attention. Therefore this study was conducted to explore the ethnoveterinary plants and practices used to treat livestock ailments across varied agroclimatic zones in northeastern Ethiopia. Information on the ethnoveterinary plants was collected between December 2019 and July 2020 across three districts using semi-structured questionnaire. The generated data included types of plants, parts used, preparations and routes of administration for treating livestock ailments. ANOVA and Chi-square were used to compute ethnoveterinarical indices among agroclimates. and concomitant traditional knowledge for the treatment of livestock ailments further studies on the phytochemical screening of ethnoveterinary plants for of becoming even more vital to maintain the animal healthcare system, productivity and sustainability of the people mainly in the area where modern veterinary clinics and experts are inaccessible. This explorative study exhibited the values of medicinal plants used by the local people in the three surveyed agroclimatic zonation (hot, temperate and cool) to treat their livestock ailments. In this survey, 95 medicinal plant species distributed across 44 families are documented against 45 livestock ailments, in which the traditional medicinal lore and practices have been orally transmitted from generation to generation. Datura stramonium, Erythrina brucei, Inula confertiora, Solanum marginatum, Zehneria scabra, Croton macrostachyus and Cucumis cifolius were the most widely used plant species for the treatments of most prevalent livestock diseases such as eye disease, bloating, and wound. The herbs and leaves were the most frequently used medicinal growth forms and parts for the formulation of traditional remedies which mostly are applied via oral route of administration. This study also showed that relatively greater ethnoveterinary plant species distribution was observed in hot agroclimatic zones and this could correspond to the high prevalence of diseases in the area. In addition, considerable difference in the UV, RFCs and FL were observed among the agroclimatic zonation and thus the ethnoveterinary plant species reported with higher UV, FL, IFC and RFCs values should be used for additional investigation and screening of the potential bioactive compounds for the synthesis of modern pharmaceutical products. In broad-spectrum, the surveyed districts are rich in ethnoveterinary plant resources compared to other research ndings and it’s therefore essential to conduct studies on the sustainable management and conservation of these plant genetic resources.


Background
Livestock production is one of the main economic sources for the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and tribal communities [1,2]. It has sundry functions as a source of calories, income generation, medicine, rituals and ceremonies, input for crop production and raw material for industry [1,3]. Thus, ethnoveterinary (EV) lore is important alternative to maintain animal healthcare system and productivity [4,5]. It is concerned with the systematic investigation of the folk beliefs, knowledge, method and socio-cultural practices of the local community [6,7]. It also explores the animal breeding and feeding system; traditional surgical techniques; magico-religious practices and so forth [8][9][10]. In fact, this practice has been experienced by the indigenous people for a century in a way of formulating and using herbal remedies to handle animal health care and increasing the quality of animal-based food products [7,11]. As a result, the majority of the people in the world rely on folk medicine for mitigation of livestock diseases [3,12]. This is because most people in the developing countries are resourcepoor and cannot afford expensive synthetic drugs [3,9,13]. In addition, rural communities have easy access to medicinal plants suited for local diseases unlike synthetic drugs, which are inaccessible and expensive.
Various ethnoveterinary studies on indigenous knowledge of potential medicinal plants, isolation of bioactive compounds and prevention mechanisms have been reported in Europe [14][15][16], Asia [1,2,5], and is of raising importance in most developing countries [13,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Despite these studies across the globe, the ailments; medicinal practices, nature of plants, frequency and mode of administration vary in relation to geography, time and knowledge [2]. In Ethiopia livestock production is an integral part of the agricultural industries [24], with an estimated population of 56.7 million cattle, 58.4 million sheep and goats, and 11.0 million equines (horses, donkeys, mules, camels) [25]. The sector contributes about 30-35 % to the agricultural GDP and generates 12-15 % of the total earnings [1]. However, the roles of livestock remain negligible because of epidemics and pandemics diseases [24,26], coupled with erosion of ethnoveterinary plants and practices [19,21]. Diseases such as the anthrax, blackleg, lumpy skin disease (LSD), Sheep and Goat Pox, liver uke etc., contribute to huge mortality, morbidity and great nancial losses [27,28]. According to FAO [1] in developing nation animal diseases and infections result in the huge production losses (30-35 %) and Ethiopia alone lost USD 35 million in the years 2010 to 2014. This study focused on areas that have huge potential of livestock resources which accounted to be about 978, 152.00 [26,29]. Thus explorations of ethnoveterinary knowledge could contribute to developing sustainable livestock disease management; conserve medicinal plant resources and potential source for drug production. This study is therefore aimed at identifying and documenting the indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants used to treat livestock disease in northern eastern Ethiopia. The research addressed the following questions.
1. Which medicinal plant species are most commonly used for the livestock ailments across the agroclimates? 2. Is there variation in ethnoveterinarical medicinal plants, usage and practices across agroclimatic zones? 3. Which types of livestock disease (s) is/are most frequently occurring in the localities? 4. Which medicinal part (s) is/are mostly used to treat livestock disease in the study districts?

Description of the study districts
This explorative study was conducted in selected districts of North Wollo administrative zone, Amhara regional state northeastern Ethiopia (Table 1; Fig. 1). The districts where the research took place are Habru (11 0 35′ N and 39°46′ E), Guba Lafto (12°00′and 39°19′E) and Meket (12°00′N and 38°44′ E) areas (Fig. 1). These districts were selected based on the fact that agroclimatic zones support abundant medicinal oral and faunal resources composition and distribution [30,31], which could in uence the ethnoveterinary practices [2]. Thus Habru district belongs to the hot agroclimatic zone, Gubalafto and Meket districts are temperate and cool agroclimatic zones, respectively (Table 1). In addition the local people here predominantly use medicinal plants as a primary health care system for their livestock. Regarding with the climatic condition, Guba Lafto and Meket districts have bi-modial rainfall pattern with an erratic distribution where minimum precipitation is mostly distributed from late March to early October and maximum rain is received in late June, July and August [32], whereas Habru has unimodal rainfall pattern where the maximum rainfall is received from late June to August and hence characterized by warm sub-moist climatic condition [32]. The main land cover types (LCTs) of the study districts are cultivated lands, forested lands, grazing lands and settlements [30]. According to CSC [25], majority of inhabitants 168, 816 (80.1%) in Habru; 134, 939 (96.5 %) Gubalafto and 214894 (94.8%) Meket reside in the rural areas of the districts (Table 1), where poor facilities and inaccessibility of veterinary clinics and modern synthetic drugs and thus the rural communities chie y depend on medicinal plant resources for the treatments of their livestock aliments. The communities in the rural areas of the districts are practicing mixed farming system that involves cultivation of crops (e.g. Hordeum vulgare, Triticum aestivum, Linum usitatissimum, Zea mays, Sorghum bicolor, Eragrostis tef) and livestock rearing. According to NWARD [29], the districts have a total of 818204 livestock population ( In addition, the preliminary survey done between 2019 and 2020 and the information obtained from the districts veterinary centers and the local people indicated that the most common and prevalent livestock diseases are the abdominal pain, diarrhea, eye disease, unwanted abortion, retained placenta and wound.  [29] and Bekele [30] Sampling methods and data collection tools The study was carried between February and July 2020 after a reconnaissance survey was performed with the local people and districts veterinary clinics. In designing the survey, three-stage sampling procedures were used. The districts (Habru, Gubalafto and Meket) were rst purposively selected based on having different agro-climatic zones namely hot (Habru), temperate (Gubalafto) and cool (Meket) ( Table 1).
Then four sites ( Fig. 1) and 40 informants were identi ed for the survey in each of the district using random and snowball sampling techniques. The informants ( Table 2) were selected based on recommendation by local authorities and religious leaders, and by their ethnoveterinary medicine practice and thus from the entire 120 sample informants (15) key informants were participated.
Consent was obtained from all informants before starting the study. Interviews and semi-structured questionnaire were used for data collection. Accordingly, informants were interviewed on types of ethnoveterinary plants, growth habits, parts used, methods of preparation, routes of administration, disease treated, and management options using their vernacular language (Amharic). Plants not known to the researchers were collected, pressed and transported to Wodia University where identi cation was made. Resources like natural database for Africa (NDA) version 2.0 (http://www.htmlexe.com/) and Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea publications [33][34][35][36] were consulted specimen identi cation. were farmers whereas numbers of sample traditional medicinal practitioners were only 16 (13.33 %). The result also unveiled that the average number of livestock in the study districts was 4.07, ranging from 0 to 14 (Table 2). We also observed that there is signi cant association between the numbers of medicinal plants species cited and sex X 2 (7) = 24.74, P = 0.001 (Fig. 2). Despite the variation in the sample individuals in terms of sex (Table 2), both genders cited almost equal proportion of ethnoveterinary plants (Fig. 2). The cross tabulated chi square revealed there was signi cant association amongst the number of cited medicinal plant species with the age categories (X 2 (12) = 20. 38, P = 0.02, r 2 = 0.65), in which an increasing trends in the numbers or frequency of ethnoveterinary plants citation within increasing age categories was observed in this study (Fig. 2). However, lack of signi cant association has shown amongst the number of cited medicinal plant species and educational status (X 2 (15) = 13.74, P = 0.07, r 2 = 0.32) (Fig. 2). Yet, in the study the local people with no formal schooling have been cited for relatively large numbers of ethnoveterinary plants compared to the other educational classes ( Fig. 2).

Ethnoveterinary plants diversity, habits and habitats
The local people in the study districts are greatly dependent on the traditional medicinal plants for the treatment of animal diseases. Thus, out of the total surveyed individuals, more than 93(77.5%) relay on herbalists for the treatments of their livestock ailments, whilst very few 22 (18.33%) of the respondents preferred veterinary clinics and others 5 (4.17 %).

Values of ethnoveterinary indices across the surveyed agroclimates
The present study revealed that there was a signi cant difference (F = 5.41, P < 0.01) in the use value (UV) of medicinal plants to treat livestock disease among agroclimatic zones (Table 4) (Table 5). In this study, we also found considerable differences in FL (F = 3.95, P < 0.05 and RFCs (F = 3.55, P < 0.05) among the studied agroclimatic zones (  (Table 6).

Discussion
Ethiopia hosts a large diversity of plant species [30], coupled with varied types of traditional plant based medicine and cultural heritage stemming from the treatments of livestock ailments [1,11,19,24]. More than 80 % of the rural communities in Ethiopia use these plant remedies for livestock healthcare systems [1,40]. In this study, the majority (77.5%) of the respondents were found to be using ethnoveterinary plants for treatments of their livestock ailments. The cross tabulated chi square con rms that a considerable association in medicinal plants citation among sex and age categories whilst there was no signi cant association with the educational status (Fig. 2).
Irrespective of the association, males, elders and participants with no formal education enumerated relatively greater numbers of ethnoveterinary plants and this could be ascribed to these informants as having more experience to the plants and lores found in the Among 44 botanical families used to treat livestock diseases in our study, Asteraceae has the highest record (10) of species, followed by Fabaceae (9), Euphorbiaceae (6) and Solanaceae (6) (Fig.   3). In fact, the Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae and Solanaceae are large, mostly cosmopolitan families that are known to be medicinal values worldwide because of being rich in essential oils and other secondary metabolites [44]. The ndings were in agreement with previous studies reported in Ethiopia by Luleka et al. [12], Yigezu et al. [43], Yineger et al. [45], Mes n et al. [46] and in other countries by Tariq et al. [4] and Khan et al. [47] in which Asteraceae was the commonly used plant family by traditional healers for livestock diseases remedy. However, in this study we also found that a signi cant difference in the ethnoveterinary species (P < 0.01) across agroclimatic zones (Table 4), in which relatively the highest numbers of species were found in hot (Kolla) agroclimatic zones followed by temperate and cool agroclimatic zones. This could be due to the fact that in hot area disease prevalence is very high and hence the local communities are familiar and relied on varied types of medicinal plants to treat their livestock ailments. Similar results were reported in lowlands (hot) of Konta (southern Ethiopia) that came up with 120 plant species for medicinal purposes [48]. In contrast, Khan et al. [2] noted that the diversity of ethnoveterinary plant species decreased with decreasing elevation from high altitude (cool) to plain area. As far as the usage across growth habits and habitats, herbs were the most commonly used growth forms for the treatments of livestock ailments (Fig. 4), which were widely growing in the wild habitats (Fig. 4). This greater reliance on herbs in livestock remedies might be due to the presence of potent chemicals of high curative e ciency but needs further phytochemical screening to validate the local knowledge. Similar studies on the local communities' use of herbs for the treatments of livestock ailments were reported by Khan et al. [2], Tariq et al. [4], Hassen et al. [49]. In terms of plant parts, leaves were the most frequently used part for livestock remedy formulation (Fig. 4), which was prepared mostly by crushing and pounding, mixed with water as vehicles for application via oral followed by dermal and ocular routes. Studies conducted by Tariq et al.
[4], Feyera et al. [22], Hunde et al. [40], Hassen et al. [49], showed that leaves are the most considerable part used for preparation of livestock remedies. The present study is also in lines with the ndings of Feyera et al. [22] and Eshetu et al. [50], who asserted that oral and dermal are the main routes of administration for livestock disease remedies. The majority of the ethnoveterinary plants reported are utilized to treat eye infection, followed by bloating and wound while a single medicinal species (Solanum nigrum) was cited for the treatment of lung livestock diseases. Also Assefa and Bahiru [23] in the adjacent agroclimatic zone to Gubalafto and Meket described that pasteurellosis and wound are the most frequently cited animal diseases. However, Kidane et al. [13] and Yineger et al. [45], reported blackleg followed by anthrax diseases seems to affect most frequently the cattle. The dissimilarity in the kind of livestock diseases could be ascribed to the variation in agroclimatic zonings. Medicinal plants with high informants report to a particular attribute always also have higher UV value and vice versa [51]. In this study considerable difference (P < 0.01) was observed in UV among the studied agroclimatic zone (Table 5).
Three medicinal plant species commonly found in the three agroclimatic zones, Datura stramonium, Brassica nigra and Albizia schimperiana, were registered with higher UV values in hot, temperate and cool agroclimatic zones, respectively (Table 5).This implies that the species with greater UV are indispensable for the treatment of numbers of livestock diseases compared to the species with lower UV values. According to, Martin [38] and Trotter and Logan [51], plants with some repetitive manner are likely to be biologically active. In the same ways of considerable difference in FL and RFCs could be ascribed to the relative abundances of the ethnoveterinary plant species in the study provinces. Accordingly, the Datura stramonium, Croton macrostachyus and Brassica nigra were revealed higher FL values which are greater than 50 % (Table 5) and in terms of RFCs, the Cucumis cifolius, Solanum marginatum and Olea capensis found to be higher values in hot, temperate and cool climatic zonings, respectively ( Table 5). The highest agreements (ICF = 0.87) in using ten taxa of the 68 reported events was observed to cure bloating (Table 6) and this might indicate the ailment is common to the surveyed agroclimatic zones and the ethnoveterinary plants found to be conventionally effective in treating the ailment. This agrees with Ahmed and Murtaza [9], Aziz et al. [10], Luleka et al. [12], who observed that a high ICF value is allied to a few target plant species with high use reports in in treating a speci c disease category and for screening bioactive compounds. In general the UV, FL (%), RFCs and ICF values vary depending on locality, nature of vegetation and geo-climate [47,51] and therefore their higher medicinal citations for a particular livestock disease treatment, for example, as observed in hot agroclimatic zone, could be ascribed to higher disease prevalence in this area which probably boosts the awareness of the traditional healers to formulate plant remedies for their livestock diseases than the witchdoctors in temperate and cool climatic zones.

Conclusion
Ethnoveterinary lore is becoming even more vital to maintain the animal healthcare system, productivity and sustainability of the people mainly in the area where modern veterinary clinics and experts are inaccessible. This explorative study exhibited the values of medicinal plants used by the local people in the three surveyed agroclimatic zonation (hot, temperate and cool) to treat their livestock ailments. In this survey, 95 medicinal plant species distributed across 44 families are documented against 45 livestock ailments, in which the traditional medicinal lore and practices have been orally transmitted from generation to generation. Datura stramonium, Erythrina brucei, Inula conferti ora, Solanum marginatum, Zehneria scabra, Croton macrostachyus and Cucumis cifolius were the most widely used plant species for the treatments of most prevalent livestock diseases such as eye disease, bloating, and wound. The herbs and leaves were the most frequently used medicinal growth forms and parts for the formulation of traditional remedies which mostly are applied via oral route of administration. This study also showed that relatively greater ethnoveterinary plant species distribution was observed in hot agroclimatic zones and this could correspond to the high prevalence of diseases in the area. In addition, considerable difference in the UV, RFCs and FL were observed among the agroclimatic zonation and thus the ethnoveterinary plant species reported with higher UV, FL, IFC and RFCs values should be used for additional investigation and screening of the potential bioactive compounds for the synthesis of modern pharmaceutical products. In broad-spectrum, the surveyed districts are rich in ethnoveterinary plant resources compared to other research ndings and it's therefore essential to conduct studies on the sustainable management and conservation of these plant genetic resources.

Declarations
Competing interests The Authors of this manuscript have no con icts of interest to declare

Funding
No funding was received for this research.

Availability of data and materials
All data are presented in this article Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable.

Consent for publication
Not applicable.

Authors' contributions
Ahmed Hassen and Meseret Muche: involved in designing, data collection, analysis, interpretations, and writing of the manuscript. Muthama Muasya and Berhanu Aberha: participated in manuscript organization and grammar editors. Both authors read and approved the nal manuscript.