Many camels helped at the Pushkar Fair

Pushkar is one of the oldest cities of India. It is famous for its temples and ghaats. Traders and villagers from all over Rajasthan and neighbouring states gather with thousands of camels for trading. Pushkar fair is one of the most popular and colourful fairs of the ‘Thar’ desert of Rajasthan. Traders and villagers from all over Rajasthan and neighbouring states gather with thousands of camels for trading.

Nearly 10,000 camels, horses and bullocks were assembled this year from all over northern India.

AAA partner group, Help In Suffering (HIS) organised a week long free Camel treatment camp at the fair from 4th November to 11th November 2019.

A total number of 542 camels were treated for various clinical problems. 255 camels were de-wormed to reduce the gastric worm load. Camel owners were advised to follow the de-worming schedule for at least once in three months to keep their camels healthy.

Majority of the other cases presented to the camp had gastric disturbances which mainly include simple indigestion along with few cases of diarrhoea, colic, and impaction. Sudden change in feed and water, stress due to long journey and diurnal variations of temperature during the fair are the main factors responsible for gastric problems.

A major proportion of camels were suffering from different wounds like nose peg wounds, saddle sore wounds, leg injuries, eye injuries, punctured foot pad wounds etc. Treating nose peg wound injuries was the major challenge to the team as each and every owner was educated about the significant importance of plastic nose pegs over the wooden and metal ones.

Mange is a very common disease of camels. This year 275 camels were treated for it.

Camel carts are very much prone to road accidents on highways because of their invisibility during night time. To prevent these accidents, reflectors were fixed to 192 camel carts by the HIS team.

1000 educational leaflets were distributed to camel owners to encourage an understanding of better management practices & caring of their camels.