Use Of Animal Power Research Articles

Prevalence of cardiovascular disease in donkeys

THE world's donkey population is estimated at 44 million, compared to about 58 million horses (FAO 2007). In developed countries, donkeys are often considered less economically valuable than horses. However,...

Spatio-temporal dimensions of draught cattle and buffaloes in Tamil Nadu

Use of animal power generally enables farmers in Tamil Nadu as well India to increase agricultural production. The present study was conducted to explore the spatio-temporal dimensions in draught cattle and buffalo population in Tamil Nadu. Conventional analysis like mean and percentages were used for the present study. Apart from these analyses, the annual compound growth rates (ACGR) of livestock population were calculated. The scenario on cattle and buffalo population over different census periods, their compositional change, status of breed-wise cattle and population, temporal analysis on work animal population and their share to total cattle and buffalo population, scenario of draught animal population density, availability of draught animal power, district-wise variations in draught cattle and buffalo population for the state of Tamil Nadu were worked out and discussed. As a whole, the draught cattle and buffalo population in Tamil Nadu was found decreasing over years, and strategies for improvement of draught animal power in Tamil Nadu was proposed.

Development of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for sustainable productivity and natural resources management in the primary sector of national economies

The human work force and the use of animal power in agriculture are getting reduced the world over, in general. The use of tractor power has gained prominence. Research and development institutions devise different agro-techniques, but their field applications are largely limited by lack of an operational work force. The development of BPO in agriculture will provide the setup for undertaking specialised jobs and generating employment in the countries. The task undertaken by BPO will produce benefits in terms of resource generation that will provide employment for different classes of educated groups of people. The task for BPO may vary geographically, and can be selected from promising research and development institutions in the regions. Unique case studies selected for applying BPO activities has shown implications for cost benefit ratios. Thus the service sector, which is becoming a tertiary industry in the non-agricultural sector, can be brought into the agricultural sector as well. Goods and services so developed can be patented or registered with the geographical indication registry (GIr) in order to fortify BPO activity further. Patents and GI registration provide specifications to consumers encouraging them to buy genuine products instead of becoming victims of duplication and foul practice imitations. Strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) analysis supports the development of BPO. Further research needs are specified for undertaking BPO activities in the most prominent effective practices such as pre-sowing irrigation, precision sowing and insecticide spraying, constituting priority I. There is good scope for operational research on BPO in agriculture. This is a case crying out for management development or development in management in agriculture.

The economic importance of draught oxen on small farms in Namibia's Eastern Caprivi Region.

The main aim of this study was to analyse and document the value of smallholder farmers’ use of Draught Animal Power (DAP) systems in the Eastern Caprivi Region and to test the economic viability of DAP usage versus using tractors. This study applied Rapid Rural Appraisal techniques (RRA), including a survey. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 312 farmers at their farms and data was gathered on the use of and economics related to the draught animal system. Crop enterprise budgets, project reports, expert opinions and group discussions were analysed. The research found that the use of animal power performs better in terms of physical productivity per ha compared to tractor usage. Furthermore, Sibinda production guided by the oxen farming technique outperformed the other systems when it was evaluated with parametric analysis. From a financial perspective, Sibinda and Linyanti oxen farmers ranked above their counterparts using tractors. Further, the exercise indicated that farmers are facing a multitude of challenges such as damage incurred from wild animals and high input costs. It is difficult for a young generation to take up farming in Caprivi within the current cost-price squeeze environment. Therefore, it is crucial to increase the level of potential new farmers’ production and management proficiencies through training and skills development programmes.

The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century Ann N. Greene (bio) The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. By Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. xi+242. $50. Historians often state that industrialization eliminated the use of animal power, and they have often used the replacement of work animals to gauge a society's technological progress. Clay McShane and Joel Tarr set this paradigm on its head by showing that horses occupied an essential niche in the industrial ecology of the nineteenth-century American city. They argue that the nineteenth century was the "golden age of the horse" (p. 17). Nowhere was this more true than the city, with which horses are least associated in popular culture but in which horses were indispensable sources of power. As horses moved goods and people around the city, and powered construction and shipping, they shaped its economy, ecology, built environment, culture, and social relations. In turn, the urban demand for animate power reshaped the horse population. During the nineteenth century, many Americans saw horses as "living machines subject to technical refinement" (p. 2). Horse technology was dynamic; it produced improved horseshoes and modes of harness, better nutrition and care, vehicles with less friction, and pavements with more traction. It also produced different horses, as breeders increased the size and variety of American workhorses to meet the specialized demands of the urban economy. Urban horses were valuable not only for their power but also for their manure, which was sold as fertilizer, and even for their dead bodies, which were rendered for hair, hides, bone, hooves, meat, fat, and chemicals.Horses were also important urban consumers. The urban economy included manufacturers of goods for horses, owners of stables, and an extensive horse services industry. This horse economy was not separate from the urban economy—indeed, to a great extent it was the urban economy. [End Page 462] There were many ramifications of having dense resident populations of horses and using horses as machines. Controlling equine behavior meant first controlling human drivers. Traffic regulations were rarely enforced, but starting in the 1870s humane societies began monitoring the behavior of teamsters and horsecar drivers (though not the drivers of upper-class carriages or their owners) for cruelty and recklessness. Stables were noisy and posed the risk of fire and disease. Trade regulation and commodification changed urban grain and hay markets. Owners of freighting and street-railway companies rationalized their operations around the characteristics of horses. They put equine workers on different schedules than their human workers to prevent excessive fatigue, they constructed state-of-the-art stables, they sought out the latest information on nutrition and shoeing, and they arranged to have veterinarians provide regular medical care. One of McShane and Tarr's best chapters addresses horse-powered mass transit as "a path-breaking technology, setting in motion far-reaching changes in urban spatial structure" (p. 83).Horse railways altered the use of streets, sorted space into specialized categories, and facilitated suburban development. As new public spaces that brought people of different groups into close contact, horsecars "focused and exacerbated the tensions latent to the city" (p. 82). By the end of the century, public health officials were decrying the pollution that horses created. Meanwhile, as traffic congestion highlighted horses' animal nature and unpredictable behavior, they were viewed as potentially dangerous. Yet despite the rapidity with which Americans took up the automobile, the use of horses in urban settings declined slowly. Although horses disappeared rapidly from mass transit as street railways electrified during the 1890s, and from private urban and suburban transportation, they remained essential to urban freighting and delivery for decades. The Horse in the City presents a rich and complex picture of nineteenth-century urban life. (The Chicago Stockyards, for example, employed nine horse barbers!) McShane and Tarr have given us a book that is simultaneously an urban social history, a social history of a technology, and an environmental history. It adds to our knowledge of urban development and, more broadly, shows the importance of understanding how the industrialization of horses and other organisms affected the direction...

Wheat into Flour: A Story of Milling

This article chronicles the milling of wheat beginning with its cultivation about ten thousand years ago. It describes the milling of the grain, starting with primitive hand tools, progressing to larger mills, then the use of animal power to turn milling stones. Changes in the design of the mills made them more efficient. Using flowing water to turn the millstone greatly increased output; people without access to flowing water devised mills turned by the wind. As wheat became a more important crop, an automated system, using elevators and gravity chutes, made it possible to mill even more grain. Technological advances led to changes——rollers replaced stones, steam replaced water, and electricity eventually replaced steam as the mill's energy source. Modern mills employ sophisticated machinery in an attempt to extract as much flour from the wheat kernels as possible.

A Preliminary Survey on the Use of Animal Power in Agricultural Operations in Adamawa State, Nigeria

The study was conducted in Adamawa state, north-eastern Nigeria. One hundred and twenty-six farmers who used animal power for agricultural operations were interviewed. All the farmers used bulls for draught work. Ninety-six per cent of the farmers owned only one pair of bulls, while 4% had two pairs. Only ridging, weeding and transportation were undertaken using bulls. About 81% of the farmers used their draught animals for ridging, 18% for weeding, and 1% used them for transport. Ridging and weeding were carried out using the same implement, the mouldboard ridger. About 60% of these were factory-made, while the rest were made by local artisans. Carts were manufactured locally from wood. Working periods of draught animals ranged from four to six hours daily, and three to five months annually, with most farmers (71%) covering 0.6–1 ha/day. The area cultivated by individual farmers in each cropping season varied between two and six hectares. Draught animal owners derived income from renting them out to other farmers at a rate of N500 to N1000 per hectare. There were no complaints about the care and management of draught animals by farmers. The study suggests the need to look into the possibility of diversifying animal power utilization in the state.

Performance and management of draught animals in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: a review.

Use of animal power generally enables farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to increase agricultural production and improve the quality of life. Effective use of working animals depends on an understanding of the capabilities of the animals for work, their husbandry requirements and the factors which can influence their performance. These issues are reviewed in this paper in the context of the use of animal power in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. The type of animal used for work determines power available to the farmer. The performance of donkeys, horses and cattle have been compared in work tests. Equids are more suited to rapid low draught activities where their faster speed can be used to advantage. At higher draught forces, where speed is less important, the additional weight and power of cattle are an advantage. Use of heart rate recovery after work gives a reasonable indication of fatigue and fitness of equids, when test conditions are standardized. Although feed requirements for work are generally low, feed quality can be so poor that animals are unable to eat enough to meet energy needs for work, and so lose weight during the work season. However, improvements in work performance are not always seen following supplementary feeding in the dry season and the economics need to be considered in each case. Food availability, diseases and heat stress, the major constraints to performance of draught cattle and donkeys working in sub-Saharan Africa, are discussed.

Smallholder mechanisation: man, animal or engine?

The importance of mechanisation in improving agricultural productivity needs no emphasis, but the most appropriate system depends very much on local socio-economic factors. In western countries, where labour is scarce and expensive, the tractor and an associated range of implements may well be the most attractive choice on the basis of cost-benefit analysis. However, in many Third World countries—where quite different socio-economic situations prevail—the use of animal power, or even simply of human power using improved hand implements, may be the more attractive.