Africa-Press – Tanzania. MOROGORO: SOKOINE University of Agriculture (SUA) has embarked on research to develop cheap and quality fattening animal feeds to boost livestock keepers’ income.
The Project Coordinator from SUA Department of Animal, Aquaculture and Range Sciences, Prof Sebastian Chenyambuga said the research aims at improving the productivity of indigenous cattle and agro-pastoralists through improved utilisation of feed resources and empowerment of livestock keepers.
“The project intended to develop cheap and good quality fattening feeds based on locally available ingredients to reduce production costs and promote efficient utilisation of crop residues to avoid animal weight losses during dry season,” said Prof Chenyambuga.
He said also the project helped to identify market opportunities and niches for beef from indigenous cattle and determined problems affecting various actors in the value chain.
Prof Chenyambuga said the two-year project worth 120m/-was funded by the Tanzania Commission for Sciences and Technology (COSTECH) which also enabled the empowerment of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists through training and formation of cattle fattening associations.
He said the experiment was conducted at Mtanana B Village in Kongwa District for 90 days. Fifty bulls with the age of two to three years were assigned, which resulted in high growth performance.
Prof Chenyambuga revealed this during the visit of the COSTECH team and journalists at the university adding a mixer containing maize bran and molasses as energy sources and also sunflower seeds cake and minerals pre-mixes as protein and minerals sources.
Meanwhile, he said the biggest market for fattened cows is National Ranch Company (NARCO-Kongwa).
He said through the project the district’s farmer groups were formed and registered at the district level.
“The farmers group in Kongwa District was linked to the bank to obtain a loan that can be used for running cattle fattening enterprises,” he said.
Prof Chenyambuga revealed that cattle fattening generates the highest gross margin value-added along the beef cattle value chain that should be promoted for adoption by livestock farmers.
On his part, the Muungano Mtanana Group Chairman, Mr Lakson Lechipya said the project provided them a big profit because after fattening the weight increased from 200kg to 600kg in 90 days.
He said before they were getting a profit of 30,000/- to 50,000/- but now they reached a profit of 200,000/- to 235,000/-. “As a group, we continued our unity and fattened ten cows in a place where after one month we sold them and made a profit of 2m/-,” said Mr Lechipya.
He requested the government to build them a good permanent shed for fattening as well as connect them with financial institutions so that they could increase capital.
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