Ethnoveterinary Knowledge and Practice Applied to Domestic Animals Raised in the Ukraine Colonization Community of Palmital, Paraná State, Brazil

Animals Raised in the Ukraine Colonization Community of Palmital, Paraná State, Brazil. Although Brazil is one of the world’s major cattle producers and has rich social, ethnic, and biological diversity, ethnoveterinary studies are rare in Southern Brazil. Knowledge of plant use by farmers in the rural areas of the Ukrainian colony of Palmital, southern Brazil, can contribute to understanding the relationships among plants, smallholder farmers, and their livestock. Semi–structured interviews were conducted with non–random sampling following the “snowball” method. The information collected included local plant names, plant parts used, mode of preparation, route of administration, domestic animal species, and diseases requiring treatment. The informants were encouraged to show the plants, which were collected, identified, and stored. The informant consensus factor (ICF) and the use value (UV) were calculated. Thirty women and 20 men reported a total of 45 native and introduced plant species belonging to 29 families that are used for ethnoveterinary practices, mostly for cattle and goats, with the highest ICF for mastitis and antiparasitic treatments. Cattle are the most important livestock species bred in the community; therefore, most plant treatments were for cattle health problems. Similar studies on European immigrant communities in Brazil are lacking and could be a valuable source of information about how immigrant culture translate into local knowledge of veterinary medicinal plants.