Zoopharmacognosy with individual animals or herds offers prospects for livestock health and improving the livelihood of rural communities and has potential applications in the management of several livestock diseases.

The rural communities that could benefit most are usually in countries where a wide diversity of wildlife and plants already exist, but knowledge and awareness of zoopharmacognosy concepts is either lacking or non-existent. Instances where natural medicine in livestock health is already practiced, integrating zoopharmacognosy concepts with individual animals and herds can broaden the existing range of nature’s remedies. Healthy livestock and health management is vital to livestock farmers, in particularly smallholders in many under-resourced countries which can directly improving the livelihoods of those that depend on them and are not usually
prioritized by public health organizations.

The health of livestock animals is influenced by the environment in which they live and no matter how well animals are farmed, there is inevitably a certain amount of stress involved for them with intensive farming, breeding performance, social and climatic effects of stress on herds or individual animals. Zoopharmacognosy can be an effective tool for livestock health management and where many livestock farmers that add vitamin and mineral supplements to animal feeds, while this is done with careful knowledge, it may not be the natural choice of the animal.