19 May 2026

As the FMD surveillance continues to roll out in Zone 11, farmers in the peripheries of Lobatse are encouraged to herd and kraal their livestock for easier management by the veterinary services surveillance team.

In an interview, Department of Veterinary Services’ senior veterinary officer for Lobatse, Dr Vincent Kgathi said they have intensified surveillance in the outskirts of Lobatse by carrying out significant processes that involved ongoing detection and monitoring of the FMD virus as part of FMD measures and controls.

So far, he said Lobatse office which covers Ramotswa, Lobatse, Otse, and Mogobane has conducted FMD clinical examinations on 15 000 cattle and vaccinated 7 761 livestock. At present, he said the team was in the peripheries of Lobatse carrying out surveillance in temporary kraals which have been set up by farmers who primarily use the Peleng Dam for watering livestock.

“Farmers from neighbouring villages bring their cattle here for drinking and end up setting up kraals in the outskirts of town. It therefore becomes a challenge to round up all cattle especially that some of them are not branded,” he said.

As such, Dr Kgathi encouraged concerned farmers to assist through construction of temporary cattle crushes to enable veterinary officers to carry out FMD disease control measures, adding that they were currently challenged with accessing such facilities, despite them being critical for a swift operation.

He disclosed that the challenge caused delays in surveillance, highlighting that a programme that was scheduled to take a week, took about three weeks as veterinary officers first had to source logs in the bush to construct cattle crushes to be able to do their work.

He nonetheless said they continued to mobilise resources and were able to source one mobile crush which was located in Good Hope. However, he said that was not enough as they needed more. He raised concern that some of the cattle found at Peleng Dam were not branded while others did not have ear tags. He therefore encouraged farmers to herd and kraal their animals and to also come forth to improve FMD surveillance efficiencies in the area.

Dr Kgathi also encouraged farmers to form clusters to be able to build temporary cattle crushes faster to facilitate veterinary officers to carry out surveillance more effectively. ENDS