Milk Production Performance, Challenges and Opportunities of Dairy Cattle Production in West Hararghe, Oromiya Regional State

Abstract

The study was conducted in West Hararge Zone Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia with the objective to describing the dairy production and reproduction performance, identifying and prioritizing researchable issues which make an impact on the development of dairy sector, identifying factors influencing dairy production, constraints and opportunities and forwarding suggestions for the development of dairy sector. Two districts from midland and lowland agro-ecology were purposively selected. Moreover, two kebeles were also selected purposively from each district based on dairy cattle population and accessibility. A total of 120 households were selected for survey data collection from the three agro-ecologies. For the monitoring study, 4 lactating cows in each lactation stage for each rural kebeles as well as for each breed were used. A total of 112 lactating cows were used. The result of the study indicates that the majority (85.8%) of respondents use local breed cow for milk production and the remaining 14.2% of respondents are used cross breed. Average daily milk production was 2.98 litters/day/cow and the average price of one liter milk in the study area at the study period was 23.63 birr. There was a significant difference between the two breeds on the mean age at first calving. Local zebu cow has significantly (P < 0.05) higher mean age at first calving 46.73 ± 0.30 than cross breed cows 31.41 ± 0.53 at the study area. Cross breed cows had significantly shorter (14.44 ± 0.43) months of CI than that of local zebu cow (16.02 ± 0.29). Majority of the respondents ranked feed shortage as the first constraint and also mastitis as the first economically important disease problem.