Abstract
Ethiopia enowed with alarge livestock population in africa as well as in the world. Dairy farming is one of the world wide practiced farming including Ethiopia. The main aim of this review is to know the overall preformance (both productive and reproductive) of crossbred dairy cattle in Ethiopia. According to inputs, agro-ecology, intensity of production dairy farming is catagoized as low land pastoralism, high land smallholder, urban and peri-urban small scale dairy farm and intensive (specialised comercial) dairy farming systems. The feed resourse for low land pastoralism and highland small holders is mostly natural pastures and crop by products. However, for urban and peri-urban small scale and intensive farms is purchased hay, green legum and other concentrats. Ethiopia has divrrsified dairy cattle breeds and the cross breeds have different production performance. Those differences in performance with in and between breeds could be due to management activity. There are also constraints that can influence the performance of dairy cattle like shortage of feed, poor genetic performance and poor management systems. The existing opportunities to improve thire performance includes the presence of diversified breeds as well as introducing of artificial insemination service technology. Besides these, the productive and reoroductive performance can be improve through good management. Therefore, good forage development strategy and good breeding strategies must be under taken by the government as well as other concerned bodies. Keywords : Productive, Reproductive, Preformanec, Dairy Cattle, Management DOI : 10.7176/JBAH/9-6-04 Publication date :March 31 st 2019
Highlights
Ethiopia is rich in livestock population and owes 52.13 million head of cattle which makes largest population in Africa [1]
Considering several factors like climate condition, land availability, crop production, market access, production intensity as well as agro-ecologies; four major dairy farming are distinguished in the country as lowland pastoralist, highland smallholder, urban and peri-urban small scale and commercial farming
Productive and reproductive performance of dairy cattle mainly depends on breed type
Summary
Ethiopia is rich in livestock population and owes 52.13 million head of cattle which makes largest population in Africa [1]. Despite this fact the farming system is subsistent where there is no specialized and systematic breeding used. The annual milk production in Ethiopia is 1.5 million tons and showed increment of 1.55% rate from year 1961 to 2000 periods [2]. Their production and reproduction potential is seriously limited due to genetic and poor management factors. Genetic improvement through cross breeding of indigenous stock with exotic dairy types, reputable in dairy characteristic has been recommended as an alternative to increase the production and reproduction performance of dairy cow in many tropical countries including Ethiopia [3]
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