A Retrospective Review of 130 Years of Equine Disease in Sudan

Sudan has a large and species-diverse array of domestic animals. Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) puts the Republic of Sudan–since its partition with the Republic of South Sudan in 2011–as having the third largest total livestock population of all African countries. The country ranks first to third in Africa in cattle, sheep, goat and camel numbers, third in poultry and fifth in donkeys [1]. Official Sudanese data for 2009 for the then northern states of the country indicate national livestock populations as 41.65 million cattle, 51.55 million sheep, 43.27 million goats, 4.52 million camels, 7.51 million donkeys and 784 thousand horses [2,3]. Equines have a significant presence in agricultural and transport operations and for some time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were extremely important in military operations: in the last role mules–of which there are now very few–served as riding and pack animals and provided tractive power for artillery. Almost all donkeys are the local nondescript type owned by traditional pastoralists, small-scale farmers or by small transport operators in urban areas. Most horses are owned by the same categories of enterprise and perform the same functions but there are a very small number of elite horses used for racing and other equine sports.