How we fatten cows – Farmer

Under this system, the farmers selects bulls and separates them from other animals or buy lean cows that are not well fed from the market for fattening.According to Alhaji Mahmoud Ibrahim, a cattle farmer from Dadin Kowa in Gombe State, he fattens with the local feed available around him such as beans stalk, corn or […]

Under this system, the farmers selects bulls and separates them from other animals or buy lean cows that are not well fed from the market for fattening.
According to Alhaji Mahmoud Ibrahim, a cattle farmer from Dadin Kowa in Gombe State, he fattens with the local feed available around him such as beans stalk, corn or millet stalks.
 Rice brand or maize brand is also used for fattening, he said, adding that sometimes he buys cotton seeds cake or groundnut cake to feed the cows.
He said: “The dairy animals, in most cases here, are those animals that go for free range. We don’t give them supplementary feed. That is why they produce more milk during the raining season because of the availability and abundance of grasses and the fresh grass, in most cases, gives more nutrients.”
But sometimes, he said, they do buy feed to give the animals they milk in order to get more milk.
Mahmoud said the Friesian species from Europe are the ones that government normally encourages our local framers to use for cross breeding with our local breeds for milk production.
“However, recently there are seimentail from Germany that are cross-bred with our local cattle and is producing good result than the Friesian species,” he noted.
Mahmoud said that the seimentail breed has a dual purpose, explaining that it can give you milk and meat at the same time and they are also resistance to our weather than the Friesian types, which they cross-bred only for milk production.
He added: “If you go for pure breed by getting 50-50 of the cross-bred, they are very hard to be maintained unless more care is given to them before you can get good result, but here we go for 75% foreign and cross it with our local ones. This way, they produce the breed that can resist our weather. Through this we have been producing good result.”
On the feed they normally use for such purposes, he said they are using the local feed that is available around them, adding: “This type of concentrate was not yet introduced to our locality, people are not yet used to it. In most cases hardly a farmer can buy maize brand or cotton seed cake. We use our local feed to feed the animals and crop residue from our farms.”
On what ways do cow for fattening differs with those for dairy purposes in terms of feed, he said cattle fattening feed is meant to build up the muscles while the dairy animals feed are used to increase the milk production.
He said recently some organisations, like the National Livestock, developed formula for feed; 2 kilogramme of cotton seeds, 8 kilogrammes of crop residue and 1 kilogramme of molasses.
If given, definitely, the animal will give you a weight gain per day of 0.5 gramme, which will assist the farmer to get good result, he said.
He said if you use the formula on your bull, within the period of three months, you will get a good profit when the bull is sold.