‘The problem of livestock production is feeding’

What effort are you making to improve the capacity of rural farmers on crop residue utilization?We have started conducting workshops for livestock farmers in the Centre from different parts of the country on crop residue utilization under the beef value chain. The essence of the workshops is to train farmers on livestock feeding. One of […]

What effort are you making to improve the capacity of rural farmers on crop residue utilization?
We have started conducting workshops for livestock farmers in the Centre from different parts of the country on crop residue utilization under the beef value chain. The essence of the workshops is to train farmers on livestock feeding. One of the problems we have in livestock production in Nigeria is feeding and feeding is critical in the dry season.
 We have brought a few farmers together and we are trying to see how we can train them in crop residue utilization. They will go back and teach other farmers how to conserve feed for dry season so that our cattle will not have problem. So, farmers were selected randomly nationwide because we cannot bring every farmer here. Those that were brought here will go back and train other farmers. The first workshop took place between September 8 and 11 and with funds available and other resources we hope to continue.
What other contribution do you think government can make towards boosting beef production?
Well, this training centre is trying to train as many livestock farmers as possible in modern livestock husbandry methods so that they can go back and train others.
Apart from feeding, what are the other problems that need to be tackled in livestock feeding?
Disease is one of them and recently we trained community animal health service workers on that. We train people who are not professionals on the basic things they need to know about the healthcare of animals. The beneficiaries have gone back and we hope they will be able to teach other people some basic things they can do. The basic things included deworming, vaccination and things to do to prevent any disease. You know as human beings, though we are not medical doctors, there are some basic things we can do to improve the health of our animals.

Are there efforts you are making to enlighten farmers on what to do to boost milk production?
Again, we have trained a number of livestock farmers on milk production per cow. The training took place on July 6 on modern dairy cattle production methods. We trained them on feeding because it has an important role in dairy cattle production, milk hygiene and how our local breeds can be upgraded. Our local breeds produce about two liters or at most five liters of milk even in the rainy season but foreign cattle produce 25, 30 and 40 liters. If you are able to cross your animal with foreign breed the new breeds will give you more than 10 liters.
How is cross-breeding done?

There are two ways. The first one is to bring new breeds and multiply them somewhere and then share them to people who indicate interest on cross-breeding. The second one is government giving people money to buy semen so that they will be going round to inseminate the cows. These two methods are artificial insemination and then the natural method but they are not popular now. The response by the local cattle rearers is encouraging.
Milk production systems in tropical countries are diverse. At the one extreme the systems are similar to those in most industrialized countries and are based on cows of high genetic potential given ‘high quality feeds which include fodder crops or silages and grain and protein concentrates. Milk production per cow is extremely high and technological inputs are high. At the other extreme are systems which are used by the vast majority of small farmers in developing countries and are based on low inputs and productivity per cow is relatively low. These small-farmer systems vary from ones in which cows or buffaloes are fed on crop residues, agro-industrial by-products and roadside grass to beef cattle grazing tropical pastures that are milked once a day, with the calf having access to the dam for the other half of each day.