Area and duration of work: Rangpur is the fast growing small scale goat rearing pocket in Bangladesh. It has a tropical wet and dry climate which is generally marked with monsoons, high temperature, considerable humidity and heavy rainfall. Purposively this study was conducted on eight villages at Kaunia upzilla of Rangpur district namely as Arajikanua, Jigabari, Nijdorpa, Rajib-2, Rajib-4, Sadrataluk-1, Sadrataluk-2 and Sadrataluk-3 where all the villagers rearing livestock and poultry were included in this study. It was carried out for a period of four months from 10th March to 10th July 2013.
Questionnaire design and data collection: On the farm visit, a pre-structured questionnaire survey was used to collect relevant information of livestock. A closed ended (categorical) questionnaire was designed according to Thrushfield (2005). Data were collected by face to face interaction with the responded farmer, repeated questioning, observation of animal and recorded based on livestock, breed, age [in case of goat, kid (≤ 3 months), growing goat (3-24 months) and adult (>24 months)], sex, housing pattern, floor (Katcha/dirty/muddy/brick/concrete/rubber bedded), grazing (or zero-grazing), vaccination and deworming history, rearing system (intensive or semi-intensive), diseases, treatment, causes of death with mortality. Data were also sought out from the clinical cases of different diseases on goat of the farmers.
Disease identification and examination: Disease was identified with owner’s complaint, history of weakness, onset and duration of illness, identification of feasible risk factors (flock history/crowding) and clinical examination of animal. General attitude (alertness/ dullness/ depression), posture (normal/ lameness), gait (normal/ defective) and body condition of animal (Cachectic/poor/fair/good/fat/over fat) were carefully inspected by distant inspection (Radostits et al., 2000). Diagnoses were also based on clinical signs, gross observation (dirrheatic/non-dirrheatic), fecal consistency, micturation, abscess, hair coat, ecto-parasites, maggots, skin abnormalities, skin lesions with crust, scale, dandruff or foul odorous discharge) and response to treatment in case of poisoning. Mainly PPR was diagnosed on the basis of clinical findings as sudden rise on temperature (104-106ºF), profuse diarrhea accompanied by dehydration with severe salivation and muco-purulent nasal discharge. Pneumonia was identified through severe coughing with dyspnoea, presence of serous and muco-purolent (later stage) nasal discharge, rough hair with increase temperature (104-105ºF) (Fraser et al., 1991).
Data analysis: Data that were collected had been stored into MS Excel (Microsoft office Excel-2007, USA). Descriptive analysis was performed by STATA version 12.1 (STATA Corporation, Texas, USA) to estimate the association between a categorical explanatory variable with outcome and then chi-square (χ2) test was done. An association was considered as significant if p ≤ 0.05.