Study on On-farm Dairy Cattle husbandry Practices in Walmera District of Oromia Regional State

Volume 4 - Issue 4

Hirpha Ketema¹* and Amanuel Bekuma²

Received: September 14, 2018;   Published: September 24, 2018

DOI: 10.32474/CIACR.2018.04.000195

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Abstract

This study was carried out with the objective of studying on-fam dairy cattle husbandry practices in the Walmera district of Oromia regional state. The dairy cattle husbandry practices were based on field observation, questionnaire survey, focus group discussion and key informant interview. A total of 102 dairy producers were selected by using stratified random sampling technique from purposively eleven target kebeles. The survey result indicated that majorities 72.5% of household heads under investigation were male and the rest 27.5% were females. Majority of the respondents 40.2% had the family size of 7-9 members and about 23.5% had family size more than 10. Literacy wise, nearly half of the respondents (46.1%) were attended elementary education (1-8 grade), whereas 31.4% illiterate and unable to read and write. The breeding method preferred and perceived as more effective for conception by respondents were natural mating (65.7%), AI (20.6%) and others did not identify the difference between natural mating and AI (13.7%). Majority of respondents in the study area fed their dairy and other animals separately (80.4%) and 19.6% of them fed all animal together. Feeding of dairy cows based on the milk yield and separately practiced by 65.7% of the respondents, while the rest were not practiced. Grazing land was decreased from year to year mainly due to urbanization and land used for crop cultivation. However, 63.7% of the farmers did not have experience to establish improved forage but only 36.3% had grown improved forage. Even if, there was no accessibility of agro-industrial by-products because of high price, shortage of supply and far distance from the source agro-industrial center, 98% of respondents were supplementing their dairy animals with agro-industrial by-products and only 2% of respondent had reported unavailability of agro-industrial by-products in the market. Bloating (44.1%), emaciation and bloating (29.4%) and milk fever and bloating (9.8%) were among the most nutritional related diseases hampering dairy production in the study area. Majority (43.2%) of the respondents were used modern barn type constructed from local materials without cattle pen. It could be concluded from the study that in the study area on-farm dairy cattle husbandry practiced by dairy producers are encouraging for future dairy development as a whole with minor improvements.

Keywords: Dairy cattle; Husbandry practice; On-farm; Walmera district

Abstract| Introduction| Materials and Methods| Results and Discussion| Conclusion and Recommendation| Acknowledgement| References|