In Dugda District, similar to other part of Ethiopia, livestock is an important and integral wealth of indigenous people, where livestock provide cash income and foods, means of transportation, draught power, wealth accumulation (Kila lixu), socio-cultural values as gift upon marriage (Gabra/Biti and Tirma/Gega’o), in religious practices (Fala), Gada system (Butta qalu) and other cultural events. However, livestock populations, particularly cattle are frequently affected by livestock ailments including anthrax, inappetence, diarrhoea, rabies, blackleg and mange, which deteriorate health and productivity. These ailments are also among the top prevalent livestock ailment in the study District, which are also among the commonly encountered ailments throughout the country and commonly reported to be treated by herbal medications [14, 21]. Similar ethnoveterinary inventories conducted elsewhere in Ethiopia also showed the prevalence of anthrax, inappetence, diarrhoea, rabies, blackleg and mange, including researches by Yineger et al. [16] at Bale Mountains National Park, Giday and Teklehaymanot [18] in Afar people of Ada’ar District, Kidane et al. [15] in Maale and Ari ethnic communities, Lulekal et al. [19] for people of Ankober District, and Assefa and Bahiru [29] at Abergelle, Sekota and Lalibela districts. Although the outbreak and prevalence of livestock diseases varies among the areas due to climatic differences, the comparison showed similar disease-causing factors, wide prevalence and serious economic impact of these diseases in the country, beside a nearly similar livestock’s management system throughout the country.

Most importantly, a good number of ethnoveterinary medicinal plants (64) are reported to be used in management of livestock ailments in Dugda District, pertinent to availability, cultural acceptability, affordability and efficacy to treat livestock [2]. This is supported by the argument of Van der Merwe et al. [2] who stated that the indications for ethnoveterinary medicines in livestock are similar in different areas, but the ethnoveterinary medicinal plants used are usually different, based on locally available plant populations. In general, indigenous and local people of a given area developed an indigenous and local knowledge system that best fits to select and use diverse curative medicinal plants to treat frequently occurring livestock diseases [19] and less severe diseases and or injuries [53].

Interestingly, the use of herbal remedies to treat livestock ailments is still alive in the Dugda District. The result showed that in the District, farmers and traditional healers are rich in ethnoveterinary knowledge and utilize medicinal plants to treat livestock ailments. This may be related to the inhabitants’ strong relationship with livestock, its location between Arsi and Gurage Highlands. It could be also attributed to familiarity of local people to ethnoveterinary remedies, which make them feel safe in using traditional remedies. In addition, movement with livestock in search of grazing land (Godansa) and Gada grade celebrations (Chaffe Godansa), where they fetch law governing everything including livestock, human being and natural resources. Such activities might have helped them to keep the traditional livestock healing culture and share among themselves and beyond. And the presence of medicinal plants (64) indicated the potential of the District as an ethnoveterinary resource pool, despite the high rate of degraded habitats that continued for so long, its semi-arid nature and drought prone. Similar ethnoveterinary studies elsewhere in Ethiopia also reported comparable number of medicinal plants, to mention a few, 43 medicinal plants [17]; 46 [15]; 49 [18]; 51 [19]; and 53 [29]. Some of the studies documented higher number of ethnoveterinary medicinal plants than the current results, such as by Yineger et al. [16] (74 species), Yigezu et al. [33] (74) and Dinbiso et al. [54] (103), at Bale Mountains National Park, four districts of Jima Zone and Dawuro Zone of Ethiopia, respectively. Thus, the present and early ethnoveterinary inventories showed the importance of medicinal plants in management of different livestock ailments, particularly, in areas where modern veterinary services are absent, expensive, inaccessible and scanty [15]. This could be also related to poverty, the availability of medicinal plants, better accessibility and low cost of herbal medications. However, ethnoveterinary practices are vary from place to place and that is related to the diverse culture and tradition of the people as well as the vegetation type of a particular area [15].

The analysis of botanical families of ethnoveterinary plants revealed that Fabaceae, Apocynaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Solanaceae, Malvaceae and Vitaceae families are the dominant families in ethnoveterinary medication systems of Dugda District. This finding is in line with other similar ethnoveterinary studies conducted elsewhere in Ethiopia [15, 18, 19, 27, 29, 31, 33], where these families were reported as important in their respective ethnoveterinary services. The greater number of species in these families could be attributed to their wide distribution and abundance in the Acacia wooded grassland of the Rift Valley (ACB/RV) vegetation, the study area in particular. The member species of these families have developed drought-resistant mechanisms to dwell in semi-arid dry land of Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Besides, Fabaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Solanaceae and Apocynaceae families are also among the top 25 families of vascular plants of Ethiopian flora area [55] and most frequently utilized plant families to treat livestock ailments in the country [21]. Thus, the preference of members of these families could be related to availability in close vicinity, presence of bioactive ingredients in member of these families and long-term familiarity with these herbal materials [56].

In the study area, various types of medicinal plants’ life forms are employed, among which herbs accounted the highest share, followed by shrubs. The dominance of herbaceous species could be related to their rapid grow during bimodal rainy seasons of the area, availability around homestead and ease of collection. As described in Giday and Teklehaymanot [18], shrubby species are also better adapted to arid conditions as compared to plants of other life forms, which made them abundant and available in such areas for farmers and pastoralists in need. Frequent use of herbs in ethnoveterinary medications were reported in ethnoveterinary studies investigated in different part of Ethiopia [15, 16, 32, 54, 57], similarly others recorded shrubs as important herbal medications [18, 19, 27, 28]. In contrast to present finding, tree species constituted the largest share in other ethnoveterinary studies [22, 29, 33]. This similarity and variation in utilization of life forms of ethnoveterinary plants in different communities could be attributed to agro-ecological settings, indigenous knowledge exchange and independent development of indigenous knowledge in their respective communities.

The other important attributes of ethnoveterinary plants analysed were plant parts used for preparation of veterinary remedies. The study revealed that leaves are the most sought plant part for remedies preparation followed by roots. This collection of leaves as major ethnoveterinary treatments could be related to high phytochemical constituents, ease of collection and preparation of remedies, and readily availability in time of need. In agreement with current result, leaves have been reported as commonly utilized plant parts in ethnoveterinary medical systems of different ethnic groups of Ethiopia [15, 18, 22, 28, 31, 33, 54, 58] and elsewhere in the world [25, 59,60,61,62,63]. These findings differ from the results of Yineger et al. [16] who reported frequent use of roots in ethnoveterinary medical system of communities living around Bale Mountains National Park of Ethiopia. Interestingly, use of leaves as a single remedy or concoction with other parts in the study area is important for sustainable utilization of medicinal resources, because leaves are renewable resources of medicinal plants in contrary to the roots. Several studies [18, 59] indicated that gathering leaves are recommendable, as its collection does not result the death of the entire plant. However, conservation issues have been raised by other studies [19, 63], due to ethnobotanical collection of roots and whole parts, which may be destructive and unsustainable, as harvesting of roots may increase the risk of the medicinal plants extinction.

Ethnoveterinary remedy of Dugda District is largely prepared from freshly harvested plant parts. Preference of freshly made remedies could be attributed to attaining volatile essential oils and secondary metabolites, which are important to fight disease-causing agents in livestock with high efficacy and curative power, these bioactive ingredients will escape or be degraded upon drying. In line with this, traditions of using ethnoveterinary remedies prepared from fresh plant materials were widely observed in different cultural communities of Ethiopia, for instance, in ethnoveterinary medication of Afar people of Ada’ar District [18], Ankober District [19] and Mojana District [27].

In remedy preparation, local people and traditional healers strictly follow ways needed to get the intended livestock remedies. The current findings showed that pounding is the most common mode of ethnoveterinary remedies preparation, and closely followed by grinding. According to Gakuubi and Wanzala [73], modes of recipe preparation largely depended on the type of targeted medicinal plant, parts of plants employed, type of disease and the livestock types being treated. And also it could be related to long-term experiences of traditional healers on modes of remedy preparation and application with best preforming ethnoveterinary regimens [19].

Furthermore, local communities also took into consideration the number of medicinal plants involved while preparing herbal remedies based on ailments and livestock types. In this particular study, large portion of livestock remedies are formulated from single medicinal plants. The use of single plant species for the majority of ethnoveterinary recipes were also common in different cultural groups of Ethiopia [15, 18, 19, 31, 54] and other countries [3, 60, 62, 64,65,66]. As Grade et al. [66] stated, the mono-preparations of veterinary remedies could be related to confidence, experiences and deep ethnoveterinary knowledge of farmers and traditional healers to select only one specific remedy. In contrast, the dominance of poly-herbal preparations were also documented in other ethno-lingual communities, such as at Bale Mountains National Park [16]; four Districts of Jimma Zone of Ethiopia [33]; and in Buuri district of Kenya [63]. These authors argue that concoction of two or more plants would increase synergistic effects (effectiveness), neutralize toxicity effects and/or bitterness, palatability and ease of application of ethnoveterinary remedies. Furthermore, the use of ethnoveterinary medicinal plants is also shaped by familiarity of local communities with their environs, vegetation types, seasonality and ease of availability of herbal material in that particular area [56].

Regarding solvents used in livestock remedy preparations, cold water was the most principal solvent for remedy extraction. Similar observations were also made by ethnoveterinary studies in Ethiopia [19, 28, 31, 33, 54] and in pastoral Karamoja of Uganda [66], where cold water was preferred as best and effective solvent in extraction of active ingredient found in medicinal plant used in management of livestock diseases. However, other findings elsewhere in the world [59, 61, 67, 68] revealed that ethnoformulation of decoctions in boiling water was the prominent methods of ethnoveterinary recipes preparation. Maphosa and Masika [23] further explained that boiling plant material in water for a long time to form a decoctions may promote extraction of water soluble polar compounds or it could detoxify harmful substances, but the method is generalized one and less carefully selected plant parts are used [67]. In addition to herbal materials and water, non-plant materials such as salts, milk, butter, etc. are also used as important ingredients in ethnoveterinary system of the study area. These substances enhance ethnoveterinary remedies to be dissolved, improve its palatability and medicinal properties and as a vehicle system, during intake or topical application of remedies. Incorporating non-plant material in ethnoveterinary medicine preparation is not exceptional to the study area, while it is common practices in different ethno-lingual communities of Ethiopia [18, 33] and other parts of the world [62, 63, 65, 66]. In the study area, some special mode of remedy preparation and application was also observed, for example, simple surgical method on dewlap of oxen with swollen hump, where traditional healer slice root of Kalanchoe petitiana tie with string, then insert into dewlap to drawdown pus accumulated in hump.

In addition, non-plant veterinary remedies have also been documented in the study area, which are used to treat livestock ailments, these include: mixture of charcoal, burned petrol and water (for bloating), burned petrol (for wound), ash (for wound, bone fracture or dislocation), limestone (for emaciation and ectoparasites), salt (for eye disease), urine (for bloating), edible oil (bloating), honey (for gastrointestinal disorders), dough and whey (emaciation), faeces (for wound), cattle skin (for FMD), muck (smoking for BEF), sacrifice of black female sheep or goat (for evil spirit or evil eye), spleen (for anthrax) and hot iron (for blackleg and abscess). Non-plant ethnoveterinary remedies were also recorded by similar ethnoveterinary inventories conducted elsewhere in the world [13, 26, 65, 68, 69]. These uses of non-plant remedies for the management of livestock ailments could be better alternative for conservation of wild medicinal plants that are already under great threats.

As regards to sources of medicinal plants, the majority of therapeutic plants were collected from the wild. The dominance of wild medicinal plants in ethnoveterinary medicines could be related to the perceptions of indigenous people that wild plants are more potent than cultivated plants [26]. In conservation point of view, the predominance of wild sources point out presence of high impact on wild ethnoveterinary medicinal plants of the area due to ethnoveterinary collections [16, 19] and little practices of medicinal plant cultivation, which in long term diminish these vital plant resources. Ethnobotanical collection of medicinal plants from wild habitats for their roots put some plants under great pressure, like Withania somnifera, Phytolacca dodecandra, Cucumis ficifolius, Cyphostemma pannosum and Gomphocarpus fruticosus, as these plants are rarely found in the study area. Similarly, dependency of indigenous people on wild medicinal plant for their ethnoveterinary practices has been widely recorded by various ethnoveterinary studies in Ethiopia [