MANUAL FOR DEVELOPING FEED RESOURCES AND IMPROVING NUTRITION OF BEGAYIT CATTLE

Abstract

As part of the overall economic and social transformation to be achieved by 2025, the government of Ethiopia has identified modernization of meat animal production system as one of the key intervenlionsand hence supported the making of a roadmap to provide policy guidance towards this goal. The key element in the policy guidance is the recognition of available resources for meat production (indigenous breeds, feed/water, agro-industries and their byproducts etc.) and government commitment to put enabling environments (human capacity, physical capacity, technology and institutional innovations) in place to ensure competence in the global meal market. Begayit breed is among the potential indigenous cattle breeds with a far reaching implication in realizing export led economic growth. It is a large framed and fast growing indigenous breed presumably demanding better nutritional management to express its full genetic potential. Among various indigenous breeds, Begayit has relatively received little attention in the Ethiopian research for development arena and much remains to be done to make best use of this breed. Among factors of production, the road map for modernization of meat animal production system recognizes the central role of ensuring availability of quality feed (feed security) and proper plane of nutrition.Against this plan, low quality grazing pastures and crop residuesare used as basal diet of Begayit cattle and these feed resources are inherently of low nutritional quality (chemical composition, intake and digestibility). Specially during long dry season, animals exclusively kept on these feed resources are unable to support their maintenance requirement and forced to lose body weight. Thus,marked seasonality in nutritional quality of the basal diet and absence of adequate supplementation largely dictates the overall productivity (production and reproduction efficiency) of grazing herbivores such as Bagait. Achieving year round production at desired production efficiency of Begayitbreed is thus an issue of feed security (availing adequate feeds of the desired quality for all animals throughout the year) and ensuring proper feeding.Not surprisingly, the elite herd of Begayit demands quality feed and optimal nutrition to express ils full genetic potential. The key nutritional intervention in this regard is thus enhancing feed resource development and ensuring proper nutritional management of various classes of animals as per their physiological requirements.