Tick-born diseases were rife in East Africa (including Ethiopia)
The local Zebu cattle were immune to them but imported cattle were not.
Initially, we got a veterinarian to come out to treat the cattle but he knew he could not do so with one injection, so the idea of a spray race became vital. I think the vet was from Kenya or Uganda and he was honest enough to say that we needed a spray race, as a single injection would not work. So that is when the spray race idea was started.
So, when we imported Red Poll cattle from Kenya, we had to have a spray race for the Red Polls to go through to kill off the ticks. So, one of the first things we did was to build a spray race. I have a feeling that we had to make our own bricks. But quite how we did it, I cannot remember. I guess we made them from cement and small stones. Then of course we had to get the water to spray the cattle with. I don’t remember how we managed to get water into the spray race but somehow, we managed it using the tractor and a pump with a spraying mechanism attached to the tractor. We used to spray the imported cattle every 10 to 14 days The famous red tractor in the photo had been used for many things and once again was needed to be used in the spray race. The first time we used it the whole countryside came to see what madness those foreigners (foreigners ) were up to. (I think the man in the photo was either Tesfai or Rorisa) But they became quite used to the strange things we did and
Red Water fever and tick-born fever became a thing of the past….thank goodness……..
