Dairy Cattle Husbandry Practices and Coping Strategies Against Feed Scarcity in Buno Bedele Zone, South Western Ethiopia

The study was aimed with to study dairy cattle husbandry practices and coping strategies against feed scarcity in selected districts of Buno Bedele zone, south western Ethiopia. Both purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select kebeles and household respondents. For this study, a total of 384 households were used for an interview. Of the total land size occupied by the respondents, higher proportions (5.07±2.739) were used for communal grazing land followed by land for cereal production (2.86±1.495); land for coffee (1.02±0.965) and land for forest land (0.85±0.585). As the current result indicated majority (42.9%) of the households were used communal natural pasture as the main feed source, especially during the wet seasons; and road and river side and aftermath grazing (15.6%) were also used as feed resource in the study areas. As compared with tethering during wet grazing (27.8%), free grazing (72.12%) remains the major and dominant feeding system practiced in the study areas. In the study area grain leftover (27.6%) were the major supplementary feeds followed by and mill by products (20.3%) and house wastes, atela and common salt (19.01%). River (72.13%), pip water (22.1%) and deep water (5.73%) were the major drinking water in the study areas. Of the total respondents, majority (72.65%) of them housed their dairy cows in open kraal followed by adjoin house (22.92%). As the current study indicated Trypanosomiasis, Mastitis, Foot and mouth disease (FMD) were the commonly occurred diseases of dairy cattle reported by 23.44%, 19.8% and 17.7%, respectively. Changing feed recourse based on availability and cost (26.3%), rent land and grows fodder (23.7%) and reducing herd size (21.4%) were the available copying strategy against feed scarcity, respectively in the study areas.