Community Breeding Practice and the Challenges in Dairy Cattle Management in North Gondar, Ethiopia
Abstract
Dairy product is an important feed supplementation. However, rearing dairy cattle is became a challenge especially at smallholder level due to lack of indigenous dairy cattle breeds. As a result, the country has established cross breeding program sinc e 1990`s. Nevertheless, it is not uniform and does not consider smallholder farmers. Therefore, this research initiated to identify the breeding practice and the main challenges of smallholder farmers in rearing dairy cattle. For this purpose, first system atic field survey was conducted to generate preliminary information and breed judgment. Then two study areas were selected purposively based on milk production potential and dairy breed characteristics. Two focus group discussions per study area were condu cted. Then, randomly 200 respondents per study area were selected. Finally, individual interview and field observation were employed to generate the needed data. Even though there is no established breeding scheme, the smallholder farmers practiced breed i mprovement by either cross breeding or straight breeding. They implemented Cross breeding to improve milk productivity using 50 -100% exotic blood sire/semen. Pure exotic semens were preferred for AI (Artificial insemination). The smallholder framers do not select indigenous caw for cross breeding practice. However, they selected indigenous caw/heifer for replacement based on pedigree history, body stature, and udder vein. Regarding mating system, more than 50% of the respondent exercise control -mating syste m in their herd. Mostly this was done by pertaining the sire and dam together for a single day. In addition to this partiality in preference of sire, less productive individual cattle culled from the herd by castration, sell and slaughtering. The managemen t system, early castration and lack of accurate estrus detection were the major challenges in dairy cattle development. As the result of this survey in the two study areas, indiscriminate cross breeding without consideration of the production system, body size and blood levels were predominant. Therefore, successive training for smallholder farmers on breeding system is highly recommended.
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Introduction
Beyond 80% of Ethiopia human population has been engaged in agricultural. This contributes 52% of the gross domestic product (GDP), 90% of the foreign exchange (MoA 2000), and 40% of the annual agricultural output (FAO 2005). The country has the largest cattle population in Africa with 49.33 million heads of cattle (CSA 2008). Cattle provides 1.5 million tonnes of milk and 0.331 million tonnes of meat annually. Which can plays an important role in the economies of farmers, pastoralists and the country at large. In addition, 14 million tonnes of manure is used annually primarily for fuel, and six million oxen provide the draught power required for the cultivation of cropland in the crop–livestock mixed production system (Azage and Alemu 1997).
Although the livestock sector has a significant contribution to the national economy, production per animal is extremely low. Under optimum management, the average milk production per lactation of indigenous cow ranges from 494–850 kg (EARO 1999; Aynalem et al. 2009). This is very low when compared with crosses of Ethiopian Horro with Holstein Friesian (2333.63 Lit./lactation) (Belay et al. 2012).
With an annual human population growth rate of 2.4%, the present 77.4 million Ethiopia’s human population will increase to about 149.3 million by the year 2040 (FAO 2005). The rural to urban ratio will also continue to change and is expected to increase in favour of urban population in the coming 25 years. Thus, the demand for animal products is expected to increase substantially (FAO 2005). In Ethiopia, to meet the ever-increasing demand for milk, and milk products and thus contribute to economic growth, genetic improvement of the indigenous cattle has been proposed as one of the options.
Genetic improvement of the indigenous cattle focuses on crossbreeding by importing exotic breeds in the form of live animals, semen, or embryos are less successful in adaptability and productivity. Rather this indiscriminate crossbreeding of exotic breeds with the local populations causes for genetic erosion of the adapted indigenous cattle populations. Because in most cases, it is done without sufficient pretesting of the appropriateness (suitability and adaptability) of the breeds and their resulting crosses to local production systems or conditions (Aynalem et al. 2014). There is no systematic and organized selection scheme for cattle genetic improvement in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was initiated with the main objective of assessing community breeding practice and the challenges in dairy cattle management.
Conclusion
Most of the respondents have breeding practice to improve amount of milk produced by head of cattle. Of these, 85.91% of respondents used cross breeding with 50-100% exotic blooded sire/semen. For crossbreeding, about 43% of respondent select replacement female stock. These replacement female stocks were selected by body stature, pedigree history and udder vein. However, majority of the respondents couldn’t maintain replacement bull.
Nearly half of the respondents select the best male and female couples by miserly less productive cattle. Besides to partiality in mating, undesirable cattle were also culled from the herd by slaughtering, sell or castration. Early castration especially that is done for the sake of energy conservation negates genetic improvement. Therefore, training should be given to the society.
