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The Lack of Veterinary officers in the Upper East Region is seriously hampering the rearing of animals including birds in communities in the Region. Due to the erratic patterns of rain fall in the Upper East Region, most of the farmers were no longer interested in crop farming and are shifting into animal rearing including cattle, sheep, goats and poultry. The farmers raised the concerns at separate sensitization programmes on Newcastle vaccines, when Dr Joseph Awuni Adongo, National Deputy Director of Veterinary Service in charge of Laboratory demonstrating to the farmers how to apply the vaccine to their birds. Most of the farmers who are women, explained that due to unavailability of the veterinary personnel to provide services, majority of them could not raise animals and birds. Madam Ayinezeligu Awinebila, 40- year- old widow and farmer impressed upon government to work out modalities to facilitate the training of more Veterinary officers to help empower them to go into animal rearing to improve upon their livelihoods. Speaking at the meetings, Mr Eric Agongo, a Senior Technical Officer at the Regional Office of the Veterinary Service, expressed regret about the shortage of personnel and indicated that in the whole Municipality, there were only seven veterinary officers including two veterinary doctors making them nine technical officials. He noted that due to the limited number of staff, they could not cater for the numerous animal farmers in the Municipality and its surroundings, stressing "this problem is not limited to only the Municipality but the other districts in the region" Mr Agongo stated that so far the vaccination which was on its third phase had been administered to 9,000 birds in some communities including Yorogo, Nyariga, Gambibgo , Zaare, Dogbilla and Dakiuo and said more of the communities were expected to benefit from the package. He said apart from the vaccines, two persons were selected from every clan in the communities and trained to administer the vaccines on the birds, which he noted would augment the role personnel of the Veterinary services played in the communities.