Nemanja Sasa Subarevic
Oliver Stevanović
Branko Petrujkic
Abstract
Ethnoveterinary
medicine (EVM) considers implementation of folk knowledge and skills in
animal health care, production and breeding. Also it means
understanding of diagnostic, preventive, therapeutic skills and
treatments in order to improve public health. EVM has a wide importance
in the organic farming and environmental protection. Our studied
geographic area is important because it is inhabited with Shops or
Torlaks, a special ethnographic group of the South Slavs. Torlaks have
developed special animal treatment and methods of animal breeding,
particularly in sheep. The aim of this study was to examine the
knowledge of ethno veterinary medicine in villagers from the eastern
part of Stara planina in the Dimitrovgrad municipality, District of
Pirot, to point out the specificity and importance of knowledge in
relation to the geographic places and determine the applicability of
knowledge in veterinary medicine and organic production. The research
included 50 inhabitants from area of villages: Gornji Krivodol, Boljev
Dol, Kamenica and Senokos. All villages are in the territory of the
municipality of Dimitrovgrad, District of Pirot, Republic of Serbia.
Performed methods were: non-structural, semi-structured and field
interviews. According to the collected data, 64 different recipes and
methods were noted, of which 43 include medicinal plants recipes, and
other data include different methods of diagnosis, treatment, prevention
and animal nutrition.
