Preliminary Report on the Occurrence of Ocular Disorders among One-humped Camel (Camelus dromedarius) Raised at Al Butana Plain, Sudan

Abstract

Sudan possess a large population of camels raised in different ecosystems, and used for both meat and milk production. Through, camel industry has substantial contribution in Sudan economy, camel diseases posse paramount economic loss for pastoral sector of the country. There are no systemic surveys that document the prevalence of eye infections among Sudanese camels. In the present cross sectional herd base study, the occurrence of ocular disorders among camels at Tamboul livestock market was carried out over a 12-month survey period from November 2017 to December 2018. The study was intended to diagnose different types of clinical ocular diseases and to correlate their occurrence according to season, age and gender of examined animals. The overall prevalence of ocular disorders was 11.25%. Identified eye affections were hypopyon uveitis (24.76%), corneal opacity (cataract) (19.05%), conjunctivitis (14.29%), keratitis (12.38%), Blepharitis (10.48%), rupture or absent of eyeballs (8.57%), glaucoma (3.81%) entropion (2.86%), corneal neoplasm (1.90%), dacryocystitis (0.95%) and staphyloma (0.95%). She camels were more susceptible to ocular diseases than male camels. Autumn season shows high incidence of ocular disorder followed by winter and summer seasons, respectively. The high incidence of ocular disorders was found among the age group 6-10 years (46.67%) and less among the age group 1-5 years (12.38%). Blindness was reported to occur in forty- eight cases (45.71%) among different causes of ocular disorders in this study. The highest occurrence rate observed for infected animals at the age between 6-10 years.