FEED RESOURCES QUALITY AND FEEDING PRACTICES IN URBAN AND PERI-URBAN DAIRY PRODUCTION OF SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The study was conducted in urban and peri-urban areas of Southern Ethiopia to assess the quality of available feed resources and feeding practices in the area. Shashamane city was considered as urban, while Kerara Filicha, Kuyera and Arsi Negele were considered as peri-urban production system. Structured questionnaire, secondary data sources and field observations were employed to generate data. A total of 60 dairy farmers from urban and 60 from peri-urban (Kerara Filicha =20, Kuyera = 20 and Arsi Negele = 20) were selected for the study. Average herd size per farm in urban area was 5.08±0.35 out of which small and medium scale farms had 2.6±0.2 and 7.5±0.29 crossbred cattle, respectively. In peri-urban areas average herd size per farm was 4.7±0.34 crossbred cattle out of which 2.3±0.16 were in small and 7.06±0.24 in medium scale farms. Fifteen major feed types used by dairy farms were identified in the area and categorized into five classes: grazing, green feeds, crop residues, agro-industrial by-products and non-conventional feeds. The result of the study indicated that wheat straw and teff straw were the main basal diets in the study area. Laboratory analysis of major feed resources indicated that crop residues had CP, digestibility and metabolizable energy contents of 2.9-5.9%, 46.6% and 5.9-8.7MJ/kg DM, respectively. About 50% of small and 51.7% of medium scale farms use roughage feeds as a major feed source. Therefore, from the current study it was concluded that the quality of available basal roughage feed is generally low and needs strategic supplementation with protein and energy rich feeds.