Bedasa Eba, Amare Hialeslassie, Getachew Animut
Feed resources availability, accessibility and their management are the major concern to increase livestock productivity. Three Districts representing diverse agricultural farming systems were considered for this study. Multi-stage stratified random sampling technique was employed to select farm households. Household survey, group discussions and plant biomass sampling were done to generate data on variability of feed availability and their management. The results indicated that the contribution of each of the feed ingredients to the diet of livestock varies across study systems. The major feed sources were mainly from crop residues (58.5% to 78.2%), natural pasture (10.9% to 33.4%) and aftermath grazing (9.9% to 24.3%) in study farming systems. The feed source from energy dense (improved forages) was very low. Dry matter from private grazing land showed significant differences across the farming systems. The management of feed resources (feed storage, feeding strategies and utilization techniques) were varies across the farming systems. High divergence between empirical values and farmers perception on feed sources contribution to livestock. As the divergence in feed availability and their management were high across the systems, there is huge entry potential to improve available feed resources to improve livestock productivity. Hence, in the context of this work, options to improve variability feed sources mainly involve improved management of available feed sources and integrating different productive forages in crop-livestock system.
Share this article